


Carbines and Capacitors

by San Antonio Rose (ramblin_rosie)



Series: Crossed Swords Alternate Multiverse [5]
Category: Cheyenne (TV), Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, Canon-Typical Violence, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cross-Posted on LiveJournal, Gen, Historical Inaccuracy, Historical References, Nightmares, Person of Interest Big Bang, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to historical atrocities, Time Travel, Uncomfortably timely conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 85,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27496075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramblin_rosie/pseuds/San%20Antonio%20Rose
Summary: It's not every day a cowboy falls out of the sky and lands at Joss Carter's feet. But getting him well may be less than half the battle for Team Machine--not only is HR gunning for him within minutes of his arrival, but he insists on earning his keep. Computers are out of his line, but he does have other skills Finch can use, like a slow temper, a fast gun, and a lawman's mind... and having a second Man in the Suit on the team may save more than irrelevant numbers' lives.The best-laid schemes of Greer and Quinn are about to meet a mountain of a man named Cheyenne Bodie.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Crossed Swords Alternate Multiverse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2008447
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Person of Interest Big Bang 2020





	1. The Fallen Man

**Author's Note:**

> Starts sometime between POI 3.2 “Nothing to Hide” and 3.4 “Reasonable Doubt,” goes more strongly AU at 3.5 “Razgovor”; spoilers for _Cheyenne_ 2.11 “Test of Courage,” 3.2 “The Conspirators,” 4.7-8 “Gold, Glory and Custer,” 5.1 “The Long Rope,” 5.12 “Massacre at Gunsight Pass,” and 6.8 “Legacy of the Lost.” (In some ways it’s an “in spite of a nail” AU for POI—until it very definitely isn’t.) I’m plugging this into my Crossed Swords multiverse mostly because of the plot devices involved, but it stands entirely alone; there are only two references in the epilogue that tie in with the larger series. On the _Cheyenne_ side, it also fits with my [Healing the Heart of a Giant](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2008312) series, but you certainly don’t have to read those stories before reading this one.
> 
> Unless I’ve missed a dedicated archive, KayValo87 and I appear to be the only people writing _Cheyenne_ fanfic at the moment—I’d found none on FF.n or AO3 before we started—so I’m running on the assumption that she’s the only person reading this story who knows that show even slightly. Unfortunately, POV being what it is, a physical description of the character will have to wait for Chapter 2… but you can look him up if you’re intrigued.
> 
> Please note that all shifts in the way one character refers to another in this fic are 100% intentional. Also, warning for sensitive history that plays an important part in Cheyenne’s past.
> 
> Title inspired by _Pistols ’n’ Petticoats_. Many thanks to Kay and jennytork for the beta, to st_aurafina for the art, and to DesireeArmfeldt for the audio trailer!

[ ](https://imgur.com/k8Sqdsr)

Pain. Heat. Noise. Stench—rotting food, burning pitch, death. Something hard and gritty under him that wasn’t rock.

He wasn’t at all sure consciousness was his friend right now… not that he could stop its return any more than he could stop the footsteps running toward him.

“Is he alive?!” a male voice asked from somewhere above him as knees brushed his side and fingers pushed at his neck for a pulse.

He groaned in involuntary answer.

“Don’t move, sir,” commanded a second voice, closer, female. It seemed to go with the knees and the fingers—in fact, when she spoke, the fingers left his neck and turned into a hand pressing on his shoulder. “That was one hell of a fall you just had.”

Fall… he remembered falling, but he didn’t remember this noisy, stinking place. Maybe he would if he could get his eyes open, but they felt heavier than mine carts, and everything hurt, especially his head. The heat wasn’t helping, either—it was a damp heat, like on the Gulf Coast, and the air was so heavy with it that it threatened to suffocate him. He was sure he’d been in the mountains when he’d fallen from the ridge… but he’d already worked up a sweat, and now it wasn’t drying….

“Water,” he moaned.

“Laskey,” the woman ordered. When there was no reply, she repeated more sharply, “ _Laskey!_ ”

“Huh?” asked the man—Laskey—young, probably new to the job, whatever the job was.

“Water.”

“But—”

“There’s a _cooler_ in the _trunk_ ,” she stated with particular emphasis. “ _Go get him some water._ ”

“Water. Right. Got it.” And young Laskey ran off.

“Rookies,” the woman muttered in the tone of a battle-hardened sergeant saddled with green recruits, and earned a chuckle for her trouble. “All right, sir, I’m gonna have to move you a little to check your head and get you at an angle where you can drink. It’s probably gonna hurt, but I promise I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

‘Sir’ (he had a name; it would come to him in a moment) grunted his understanding. True to her word, the woman—colored, from the timbre of her voice—was as gentle as a mother while she eased his head and shoulders into her lap and kept up a running tale of what she was about to do before she did it. Moving did hurt, and he thought he might have some cracked ribs, but having his shoulders raised made it slightly easier to breathe. He could smell her jasmine perfume better, too, which was a welcome relief.

“Thanks,” he managed once she’d gotten him settled. He wanted to apologize for bleeding on her skirt, but it felt more like she was wearing trousers, which was almost as puzzling as the fact that he couldn’t tell what fabric they were made of.

“You’re welcome,” she replied and brushed his hair back from his forehead. Then she sniffed, apparently at her hand, and asked, “What do you use on your hair?!”

“Bear grease.”

“ _Bear_ grease?!”

Before he could come up with a response, they were interrupted by Laskey’s voice as he returned from his errand, though he was clearly not talking to either the fallen man or the woman in trousers. Instead, Laskey seemed to be calling to someone else—how, the fallen man couldn’t begin to guess—using some sort of code to request help. By the time he finished his message, he’d rejoined the other two. “Water,” he reported, “and wipes.”

“Thanks,” said the woman, plainly relieved. “Gimme the wipes while you get that cap off.”

Laskey evidently complied; there was a series of clicks and shuffs that the fallen man (he _had_ a name, darnit!) couldn’t follow. After the woman had wiped her hands, she washed the man’s face with a cool, damp cloth that didn’t quite feel like flannel and directed Laskey to do the same to the man’s hands and arms, which stung.

“All right, now,” she said and lowered the… bottle? canteen? to the man’s lips as Laskey worked on his arms. “Slow and easy.”

She tilted whatever it was, and water flowed into his mouth, sweet and cold as snowmelt. He drank gratefully, but she was careful not to give him more than a mouthful at a time and let him catch his breath between swallows.

“You’ve… done this… before,” he surmised.

“Sorry?” she asked, surprised.

“Desert… water… fallen… comrade.”

There was a pause before she huffed, apparently amused. “Yeah, few times when I was in the Army. Iraq _and_ Afghanistan.”

That didn’t sound right at all—he didn’t even know where those places were. “You were… in the… Army, ma’am?” That part wasn’t _so_ odd—there were warrior women among the People, and he’d met Cathay Williams[1]—but it was still unusual.

“Yeah. How ’bout you?”

“Off and on.” He wasn’t having much success in remembering details yet, but he knew that much.

“Where’d you serve?”

“No place… you’d have heard of… none of the… big battles, like… Chickamauga or… Manassas or Bull Run.” He had a sudden flash of being bound to his horse and forced to watch the massacre he hadn’t been able to prevent at the Little Bighorn, but he didn’t want to talk about that, even now.

She gave him some more water and washed his face again, which helped greatly. Then she said, “Okay, sir, I’m gonna ask you some questions, mostly so I can tell the paramedics when they get here. Just answer the best you can. Understand?”

“Yes’m.”

“What’s your name?”

“Pó’ėhóóhe.” There it was.

She paused. “What was that?”

Pó’ėhóóhe winced… where had _that_ name come from? He hadn’t used it in years. He was white, despite being raised by the People; he had a white name now. “Sorry, that’s… just… _Bodie_.” That was it. “Cheyenne Bodie.” Why had that been so hard to remember? He’d been Cheyenne Bodie a lot longer than he’d ever been Grey Fox. He must have hit his head pretty hard—the gears of his mind felt like they were rusted over.

“Where are you from?”

“Wyoming Territory.” Exactly where he’d been born, Cheyenne never had found out, but Father’s band hadn’t traveled as far east as the Dakotas.

“How old are you, Mr. Bodie?” Laskey asked.

“Forty-three.” That was the best guess, anyway. Father had never been sure how old Cheyenne had been at the time of the raid that had killed his white family.

“You have any ID?” the woman asked.

Cheyenne wasn’t sure what that meant, although her enunciation was such that he was sure she’d said _ID_ and not _idea_. “What kind?”

“Uh, a driver’s license, military ID, handgun license….”

What on earth was she talking about? “I’m… I’m sure if you wire Fort Bridger, someone there might….”

“Never mind. What day is it?”

“Hm.” Cheyenne ought to know this, but the words weren’t quite coming. “It’s… it’s the fifth day of Planting Moon, which….” He tried to picture a calendar, failed, and grimaced.

“Could you… try that again in English, sir?” Laskey asked hesitantly.

Cheyenne sighed heavily, which hurt, which made him cough. Fortunately, he still had his bandana around his neck, and the woman got it pulled up over his nose and mouth before one cough turned into a coughing fit. That stopped him not only from coughing on her but also from gagging on the smell that was worse than being in a slaughterhouse.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he wheezed when the fit passed.

“That’s okay,” she said gently and pulled the bandana down again. “So you don’t know what day it is?”

He shook his head a little.

“Do you know what year it is?”

“Eigh… 18-… 80.”

There was a pause, which probably meant that was the wrong answer. If so, Cheyenne didn’t know what the right answer could be. The mess at the Republican convention had been in all the papers in June, and while he wasn’t sure yet who he would be voting for, he’d been very sad to read how shabbily Blaine and Sherman had treated Pres. Grant. And he’d woken up just after he’d fallen, so it didn’t make sense that he could have lost more than a minute or two.

Maybe he’d slipped into the language of the People again? “Uh, sorry if I—”

“No,” the woman interrupted quickly. “We understood you. Do you know where you are?”

“Besides on the ground?”

She laughed.

With an effort, Cheyenne peeled his eyes open to get his first glimpse of her face—pretty, nice smile, maybe had a grandmother who wasn’t white or African. She was wearing a black shirt with a colorful shield patch on each short sleeve, possibly some kind of uniform, with a strange device clipped to one epaulet and… a badge that read _NYPD_.

That couldn’t be right. He must be having trouble reading upside down.

There was a name plate below the badge that read _CARTER_. At least Cheyenne had a name for her now. He looked at the badge again. It still said _NYPD_. Maybe that meant something other than _New York Police Department_. Uncertain, he looked over at Laskey—tall, lanky, pale, sort of Russian-looking, wearing the same uniform and badge. They were outside a red brick building with a metal staircase weaving back and forth up the wall. The sky was clear but hazy, and there was a similar brick building a short distance away with strange signs painted on the ground floor wall.

“No, ma’am,” Cheyenne admitted, looking back up at Miss Carter. “I’ve never seen this place before.”

“You’re at…” she began and rattled off some words that he didn’t understand. When he blinked at her in confusion, she said, “New York City.”

“New— _what?!_ How’d I get _here?_ ”

“You tell me. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Cheyenne sighed, more carefully this time, and thought. “I was scoutin’ for a wagon train… headed west from Fort Laramie into Idaho Territory. They needed an extra gun because… there were rumors that Powder Face… had escaped the reservation and was… on the warpath again.”

“Powder Face?” Laskey echoed.

Cheyenne nodded. “Shoshone chief with scars… from a bad powder burn… on his right cheek, from a rifle that misfired. He hates white men generally… and me in particular ’cause… I bested him once in a fair fight, man to man. But he’s not to blame this time.”

Miss Carter looked concerned. “So what did happen?”

“We were… camped at Eightmile Lake, and the wagonmaster decided… the folks needed a few days’ rest. There’d been some… trouble in Rawlins, and we’d had to push on. He wanted me to scout around, ’cause… that’s a good-sized basin leadin’ to Bridger Pass, but there’s… plenty o’ places to hide among the peaks… off the main trail. I’d just watered my horse at… at Ninemile Spring an’ was… headed up to the ridge, when… a bunch o’ white outlaws bushwhacked me. Didn’t even have time to draw my gun. I was doin’ all right, but one of ’em got behind me, and….” Cheyenne put a hand to his throbbing head. “Think I remember ’em… tryin’ to throw me off the ridge, and then… well, I woke up here.”

Miss Carter studied his face for a moment and seemed to come to a decision. Then she looked up at Laskey. “Go wait for that ambulance.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Laskey replied skeptically but did as he was told. He shot Cheyenne a backward glance, though, one that revealed more than he probably meant—Cheyenne had seen it before on youngsters that age.

The boy wasn’t to be trusted. Not bad at heart, probably, but he wasn’t reliable by a long way. Cheyenne needed to tell Miss Carter as much.

Miss Carter watched Laskey go, waiting until he was well out of earshot before speaking to Cheyenne again. “He thinks you’re crazy,” she said quietly, not looking at him.

Cheyenne blinked and lowered his hand. “What?” That wasn’t where he’d expected this conversation to go.

“You’re in the wrong place and the wrong year; you sound like you’re talkin’ gibberish sometimes.” She shook her head. “Hell, _most_ people would think you’re crazy or lyin’.”

“But you don’t?”

She sighed and looked down at him. “I’ve been an interrogator _and_ a homicide detective. I know when I’m bein’ lied to. I know when someone’s not right in the head. You? You’re concussed, but there’s no lie in your face and no madness in your eyes.” She shook her head again and looked away, clearly troubled. “When you rule out the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, has to be the truth.” That seemed like a quotation, but he didn’t know what it was from.[2]

He wasn’t sure what to say. “About that gibberish, ma’am…” he began hesitantly.

“It’s a real language, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What, uh… what was your father’s name?”

“Well, I don’t know who my white parents were. I was raised by a Cheyenne chief named White Cloud.”

“That’s what I thought.” She nodded slowly, still looking troubled.

“You’ve heard of him?”

“No. I just… I knew it had to be somethin’ like that.”

When she didn’t say anymore, he asked, “What’s the trouble, ma’am?”

She sighed heavily and finally met his eyes again. “I saw you appear out of thin air, about five feet up and fallin’ fast. Laskey didn’t see you until you hit the ground. But the thing is, we’re not gonna be able to prove you are who you say you are.”

He frowned. “Well… since I hit my head….”

“That may not be enough.” Something beeped, and she pulled a black thing the size of a deck of cards out of her breast pocket briefly, looked at it, and shook her head as she put it away and looked at him again. “There’s no record of a Cheyenne Bodie ever existing, even in Wyoming in 1880.”

His frown deepened, which hurt.

“But. I have a friend who can create a new identity for you that’ll hold up in the present day. I just need two things from you.”

“What?”

“Let me do most of the talking when the paramedics get here, and try to come up with another name that we can use to build you a cover story.”

He sat up gingerly and quarter-turned to face her better, holding his head again as he thought. “I’ve… been undercover a few times before,” he admitted slowly. “I think one of those identities might still be good. I don’t know as I can remember all the details, but….”

She nodded. “That’s okay. It’s better if you still have some blanks we can cover by sayin’ you’ve got a concussion. It just needs to be somethin’ that’ll work with the story Laskey already heard, like… maybe you’re an actor, or….”

“Yeah. Yeah, one of ’em was an actor. Just as long as you don’t expect me to go on the stage for real—I’d rather not have to wear greasepaint again.”

She smiled. “I think we can work with that.”

There was still some water left in the bottle, which was made of some clear substance too thin and flexible to be glass, so she traded him the bottle for his gun belt and let him sip water while they waited and he tried to dredge up the character he’d had to put on while assuming the identity of a drunken secesh jellyfish of an actor who’d happened to be Cheyenne’s double. It had been ten years or so, and his head was splitting, but if he focused… the smell of greasepaint and gaslight, the creak of the boards underfoot, the feel of the tuxedo, the songs, the dances, the applause….

“Here they come,” Miss Carter alerted him.

Cheyenne nodded, finished the water, and handed the empty bottle back to her just as Laskey returned with a young woman in a different uniform, also wearing trousers and with a… a heart-listening tube—stethoscope, that was the name—around her neck. They were followed by a portly, curly-haired man in a civilian suit that was cut differently than any Cheyenne had ever seen.

“Fusco!” Miss Carter exclaimed, surprised.

“Yeah, hi,” replied the portly man—Fusco?—as Laskey ushered the young woman toward Cheyenne. “Heard you might have a lead for me.”

“Hello, sir,” the young woman whispered to Cheyenne. “My name’s Mandy. I’m gonna check your injuries, okay?”

Cheyenne nodded. “Fine.”

“You workin’ that shooting we just cleaned up?” Miss Carter asked Fusco.

“Yeah, me and Detective Happy,” Fusco said. “We were just about back to the precinct when I heard Junior over here call for a bus. Olson thought somebody mighta seen something.”

Miss Carter tilted her head. “It’s possible. Looks like somebody threw ’im off the fire escape. Said he doesn’t remember how he got here, but he does remember that a buncha white guys jumped ’im.”

Fusco looked at Cheyenne skeptically and back at Miss Carter. “What’d they use, Kryptonite?”

Cheyenne decided not even to try to figure out what that meant.

Miss Carter shrugged. “You know how it is, especially with the Russians. But it _would_ make sense if they thought he witnessed the attack.”

Fusco looked at Cheyenne again. “Is that what happened? Did you see something?”

Cheyenne chuckled ruefully. “If I did, I sure don’t remember it _now_.” Then he flinched as Miss Mandy began cleaning one of the sore spots on the back of his head with what smelled like rubbing alcohol.

“It does look like somebody struck him on the back of the head,” Miss Mandy reported as she worked. “There are two wounds here, but only one of them could have been caused by the fall if he landed on his back.”

“Defensive wounds on his arms and hands as well,” Laskey noted.

Fusco nodded, took out a small notebook, and addressed himself to Cheyenne again. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Merritt,” Cheyenne lied. “James Thornton Merritt, from Atlanta, Georgia. I’m an actor—on the _legitimate_ stage,” he hastened to add as snootily as he could.

Laskey looked at him oddly. “What happened to being a trail guide for a wagon train?”

Cheyenne scoffed. “My _dear_ boy, New York’s a theatrical town. Surely you must know that an actor must immerse himself fully in the part he’s to play.”

“Oh, a method actor, huh?” Fusco asked with a look that meant he knew perfectly well Cheyenne had no idea what a method actor was.

“Precisely,” Cheyenne bluffed anyway. “And with the blow on the head, why, it’s only natural that I should have become confused.”

“Two blows,” Miss Mandy corrected. “We really ought to take you to the hospital for a CT scan to make certain there’s no bleeding or fluid buildup in your brain. Your GCS score’s pretty good at the moment, but given the short interval between injuries, I don’t want to take any chances.”

“GCS?” Cheyenne asked, fearing that asking what a CT scan was would give the game away.

“Glasgow Coma Scale,” Miss Mandy answered, not sounding surprised that he didn’t know. “It’s a tool we use to assess a patient’s alertness after a traumatic brain injury.”

“Oh.” However that worked, Cheyenne was glad he was doing well for the moment. “Well… I’m not fond of hospitals, but if you say there’s a risk, then perhaps we should.”

Miss Mandy paused, as did Fusco in his note-taking.

“That’s, like, the third time he’s done that,” said Laskey.

“Do we need to get an interpreter over here?” Fusco asked Miss Carter. “I don’t even know what language that is.”

Cheyenne grimaced and tried again. “I’m not surprised.” That must have been English; Fusco seemed to understand him. “I’ve been studying the Cheyenne language of late, as my character, Mr. Bodie, was raised by the Cheyenne.”

“Yeah, I think the CT scan’s a good idea,” said Miss Carter as Miss Mandy stuck something to Cheyenne’s scalp and another man in a medic’s uniform came from wherever Laskey had fetched Miss Mandy from. “You said you think you’ve got some cracked ribs, too, right, Mr. Merritt?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Cheyenne. “It still hurts to breathe.”

“We’ll have them check that at the ER, too,” said Miss Mandy.

“Does that mean he’s a transport?” the newcomer asked.

“Yep,” Miss Mandy confirmed. “Would you get his details, Brian?”

“Sure.” Brian, who Cheyenne could now see had a clipboard tucked under one arm, came around to stand next to Fusco. “What’s your name, sir?”

“James Thornton Merritt,” Cheyenne answered.

“Date of birth?”

“August 5, 18—” Cheyenne caught himself with a huff and a wry smile. “There I go again.”

“Nineteen sixty-nine,” Miss Carter supplied.

“Thank you, dear lady,” Cheyenne said as his brain steadfastly refused to do the sums to work out the current year, and not just because he had a concussion.

Brian duly wrote down the revised date. “Address?”

“Uh.” Cheyenne had never been to New York before; he tried to think of a suitable lie. “Well, I’m… I’m staying at the Grand Hotel.”

Fusco and Miss Carter looked amused; Brian and Laskey just looked baffled. Apparently the Grand Hotel no longer lived up to its name. Oh, well, that just went with Merritt’s bravado; from what Cheyenne had gathered, Merritt hadn’t been that good of an actor, either.

“O-kay,” said Brian and wrote that down. “May I see your insurance card, Mr. Merritt?”

“I, er…” Cheyenne made a show of checking his pockets while wondering what kind of insurance required one to carry a card. “I… seem to have lost my wallet.”

Miss Carter gave him a wink. Good, that had been the right answer.

Brian, on the other hand, looked concerned. “Well, is there anyone we can contact who might have that information? Spouse, friend….”

“My wife left me years ago. As for friends….” Cheyenne put a hand to his head, which was hurting worse than ever from the effort of trying to recall information he may never have had. The Thalia Reportoire Company[3] must have played in New York at some point, and Merritt had likely had friends here; but since Cheyenne had joined the tour in Atlanta and stayed with it only until its closing performance in El Paso, Col. Forrest hadn’t made him learn those names. And it wouldn’t matter if he had, because even if Merritt hadn’t been killed by his confederates who’d mistaken him for Cheyenne… if the year really was… well, whatever the year was, Merritt’s friends would either be dead or have disowned him by now.

“Forgive me,” Cheyenne said, rubbing his forehead. “My head is paining me frightfully, I’m afraid. I can’t think.”

“I’m sure Det. Fusco will be able to locate someone,” said Miss Carter and stood with a pointed look at Fusco.

Fusco blinked. “Hey, whoa, you’re leavin’ ’im with _me?_ ”

Miss Carter looked surprised that he was surprised. “It’s _your_ case.”

“Yeah, but _you_ found ’im. Aren’t you gonna—”

“Uh-uh! Me an’ Laskey gotta get back on patrol! I don’t have time to babysit your witness!”

“Yeah, my witness who can’t remember a damn thing!”

“Well, maybe he’ll remember more when his head stops hurting.”

Fusco huffed in frustration.

Miss Carter ignored him and turned back to Cheyenne. “I’ll try to stop by at the end of my shift, Mr. Merritt,” she said, offering him her hand. “In the meantime, you’ll be safe with Det. Fusco.” That confirmed his surmise that Fusco was working with her in more than their official police capacity.

Cheyenne nodded his understanding, took her hand, and kissed it gallantly. “Thank you for everything, Miss Carter.” The real James Merritt wouldn’t have done such a thing, of course, but then, Cheyenne didn’t share Merritt’s views or sympathies.

Miss Carter ducked her head with a smile that was equal parts pleased and embarrassed as Cheyenne let go of her hand. Then she drew a deep breath, collected his gun and Laskey, and left.

It was only another few minutes before Miss Mandy had Cheyenne’s arms and hands bandaged and declared him patched up enough to be taken to the hospital. That brought the challenge of trying to stand. Fusco gave Cheyenne a hand up, but the change in altitude made Cheyenne’s head swim; he staggered, caught himself against Fusco’s shoulder, and nearly blacked out again. By the time his vision cleared, Brian and a third medic were returning with some sort of bed on wheels.

“Sorry, Detective,” Cheyenne murmured and tried not to lean so hard on Fusco.

“’S a’right,” Fusco murmured back. “Gonna be okay there, Cowboy?”

“I dunno.” Without Miss Carter’s perfume there to focus on, Cheyenne was nearly overpowered by the smell of the… alley? they were in. “Startin’ to feel kinda sick.”

Miss Mandy heard that. “Nausea?”

Cheyenne didn’t dare nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

“We can give you something for that in the ambulance. You wanna lie down on the gurney for me?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Cheyenne agreed, guessing she meant the wheeled bed. It stood just about waist height for someone like Fusco, who was nearly a foot shorter than Cheyenne, but that still meant that when the medics brought it to a stop behind him, Cheyenne didn’t have far to go to sit down on it. From there, the medics helped him to lie down slowly enough that his stomach wasn’t upset further. The bed was barely big enough for him, but the medics covered him with a cotton sheet and strapped him down for safety, and then they wheeled him down the alley head-first, away from the smell but toward the noise. Fusco disappeared behind the medics for a moment but then caught up, waving Cheyenne’s hat to assure him that it hadn’t been left behind.

Once they reached the street, everything grew stranger still. The edges of the street were lined with metallic things on rubber wheels, more of which whizzed past at a high gallop with nary a horse in sight; that explained some of the constant roaring noises, but it made Cheyenne’s head spin again just to watch them. He couldn’t really get a good view of the ambulance, as they wheeled him up to the back of it, but it seemed to be like a tradesman’s wagon, only with flashing lights and bleating machines and just enough space inside for the bed and the medics. They were met at the back door by a fourth medic, who helped Miss Mandy steady the bed while Brian and the other fellow did something to it to reduce the height of the wheels so the bed would fit into the wagon.

While they were doing that, Fusco came up to stand beside Cheyenne’s head. “Just hang tight, okay?” he told Cheyenne. “I’m gonna meet you at the emergency room.”

Cheyenne nodded a little. “Thanks, Detective.”

Fusco nodded back and left, and the medics hoisted the bed into the wagon. Brian and Miss Mandy climbed in beside him while the other medics closed the door and went around to the driver and shotgun seats, and then they were off—though Cheyenne couldn’t suppress a groan when the horses bolted.

“You’ll be all right, Mr. Merritt,” Miss Mandy assured him as Brian stood to rummage in a cupboard above the bed. “We’ll be at the hospital in just a few minutes.”

Cheyenne nearly told her to spare the horses because he wasn’t bleeding that badly, but then something let out a loud honk and a wail that tore through his skull like a Crow tomahawk. After that, he wasn’t capable of saying anything and barely managed to un-grit his teeth long enough to swallow the pills and water Brian offered him. At the hospital there were more bright lights—he would have cheerfully murdered Thomas Edison if given the chance—and more beeping and people shouting and people wheeling him here and there and sticking his head in one machine and his back against another, and by the time all the hurly-burly stopped, Cheyenne was more than half convinced someone had spiked his canteen with peyote juice or locoweed before he’d left camp that morning.

But no, here came Fusco slipping through the curtain with Cheyenne’s hat in his hand. “Hey,” he said as he walked up to Cheyenne’s bed. “How you holdin’ up?”

Cheyenne groaned. “If this is the future, I don’t want it.”

Fusco chuckled wryly. “That good, huh?”

“It’s gettin’ better,” Cheyenne admitted. “They gave me pills on the way here, but I don’t know what they were.”

“Yeah, Dr. Tillman said you were pretty out of it. Has she been in to talk to you yet?”

“No.”

Fusco nodded and sat down in the chair beside the bed. “I expect she’ll be in pretty soon, give you the test results, probably let you go after that.”

Cheyenne frowned. “Let me go? They haven’t even tied up my chest yet.”

“Nah, they don’t do that anymore. Turns out it makes you more likely to catch pneumonia.”

“Oh. Huh.” Cheyenne supposed that made sense, but it seemed kind of cruel not to do _anything_ to support the ribs.

“Hey, listen.” Fusco scooted the chair closer. “I found your phone under your hat. It was busted, but I got the data off the Simm card and found a number for a friend of yours here in New York.” He raised his eyebrows, as if prompting Cheyenne.

“Oh… good.” Cheyenne didn’t know what most of that meant—he knew what a telephone was, of course, but not why one would be under his hat—but if Fusco was working with Miss Carter, this ‘friend’ probably was, too. “Did you talk to him?”

“Yeah, he’s on his way to come get you.”

Cheyenne nodded. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. So, uh… you remember anything about that homicide yet?” Fusco asked with a hint of a wink.

Cheyenne huffed. “I’m doin’ well to be speakin’ English right now, Detective.”

Fusco smiled kindly. “Yeah, I get it, big guy. Just had to ask.” He patted Cheyenne’s shoulder. “You wanna close your eyes for a while, it’s okay. I’ll stay with you until your friend gets here.”

Cheyenne nodded and let his eyes drift shut, although it was still too bright and beepy for him to do more than doze lightly. Even so, he’d completely lost track of time before Fusco shook him awake just as the curtain was pulled back and a young lady in a white coat came in, closing the curtain behind her, and introduced herself as Dr. Megan Tillman. Cheyenne didn’t follow much of her explanation of his condition, but the upshot was that his brain wasn’t actively bleeding and that as long as someone could wake him every two hours whenever he fell asleep over the next few days, there wasn’t much chance of his getting any worse and he could leave the hospital. He did also have three cracked ribs, but they weren’t so broken as to threaten his lungs, so since the head injury meant morphine was out of the question, he was allowed only (!) the sort of pills he’d gotten in the ambulance, which she said could be gotten “over the counter.” Fortunately, she’d printed her instructions on a sheet of paper for him to take with him, and Fusco waited until she’d gone to whisper what “over the counter” meant.

Cheyenne was still trying to decipher the unfamiliar pill names when the curtain opened again to admit a tall man in a black suit that was cut similarly to Fusco’s. “Jim!” the newcomer exclaimed in concern and rushed over to sit on the edge of the bed. “I came as soon as I heard! I didn’t even know you were in town—are you all right?”

So this was the ‘friend’? Well, that gave Cheyenne enough of a cue. “I suppose I shall have to be, as long as I can remember my lines. We start rehearsals tomorrow.”

The ‘friend’ shook his head. “No, you don’t. I called the theater on my way over. The angels backed out this morning, and the whole tour’s been cancelled.”

“WHAT?! Why, those scalawags, don’t they know who I—” Cheyenne’s feigned outrage was cut off by a very real coughing fit that left him gasping for breath.

“Hey, hey,” said Fusco. “Take it easy, Mr. Merritt.”

“Scoundrels,” Cheyenne wheezed. “Mountebanks… they can’t do this to me.”

The friend sighed and shook his head. “Jim, I _told_ you to lay off the sauce. First it cost you your wife; now it’s cost you this job, not to mention what the Russian mafia’s already done to you. When are you gonna get sober, huh?”

Cheyenne shook his head. “Spare me the lecture. Just take me back to my hotel.”

“What hotel? Your director had to use the last of the money to pay off your bills and get your bags out of hock.”

Cheyenne didn’t have to pretend his dismay at that. “Well, then… where am I to go?”

The ‘friend’ sighed and smiled a little. “You can stay with me until this is over.”

Cheyenne relaxed. “Thank you.”

“Hey, what are friends for?” The friend’s smile broadened. “You haven’t seen my new place. Only one bed, but the couch is pretty comfortable. Haven’t met my dog, either. His name is Bear.”

Cheyenne smiled back. “How long has it been since I saw you last?”

“Oh, five years, give or take.”

The friend then started catching Cheyenne up on all the ‘news,’ which Cheyenne was reasonably sure was all as false as their relationship, although Fusco seemed quite entertained by it. They were interrupted only when a nurse came along with Cheyenne’s discharge papers, which he duly signed. Then Fusco presented him with his hat and the friend gave him a pair of dark specs “to help with the glare,” and he managed to walk out of the emergency ward under his own power and with only minimal assistance from Fusco and the friend. Outside, they helped him into the shotgun seat of one of the wheeled metal whiz-boxes that they called a _car_ and strapped him into it. Fusco took his leave, and the friend strapped himself into the driver’s seat, which had a steering wheel a little like a ship’s tiller in front of it; then he turned a key, which started a rumble, and drove off at a high lope.

It wasn’t until they were out of sight of the hospital that the friend took one hand off the wheel and offered it to Cheyenne. “John Reese.”

Cheyenne shook Mr. Reese’s hand. “Cheyenne Bodie. Much obliged, Mr. Reese.”

* * *

[1] The one woman known to have served with the Buffalo Soldiers—she enlisted in the 38th Infantry as “William Cathay” and served in New Mexico for three years before a doctor figured out she was a woman.

[2] The first Sherlock Holmes novel, _A Study in Scarlet_ , was published in 1887; the line Carter’s paraphrasing (actually “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”) is from _The Sign of the Four_ , published in 1890.

[3] This is in fact the way the rep company’s name is spelled on the sign board in “The Conspirators.”


	2. The Man in the Suit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s at least one statement in this chapter that aligns with _Cheyenne_ canon but not with Primary World history. I’ll lampshade it more thoroughly in a later chapter.

_Earlier_

“Did Shaw get away all right?” John asked as he returned through the stacks of the abandoned library to the command center where Harold Finch was overseeing the tail end of his team’s latest adventure.

“She did,” Finch confirmed, not looking away from his computer screens, “mostly thanks to the combined efforts of Detectives Carter and Fusco, which wouldn’t have been necessary if she hadn’t _killed_ Delancey.”

John stopped to give Bear a hello scratch behind the ears and didn’t bother to point out that Carter was officially no longer a detective. “There was no other choice, Finch. Delancey and his thugs had us cornered; my hands were full of baby; and the only way to clear an exit was for Shaw to kill their boss with one shot. If she’d hit him in the kneecap, he could still have fired past me and killed his wife. If our positions had been reversed, I woulda taken the same shot.”

“I suppose we should be grateful that Delancey’s men are cowards,” Finch said drily.

“And that their gang’s on the outs with the Russians. Not only does that give us a convenient scapegoat, it meant they couldn’t expect backup from HR.”

“Y-es.” Finch didn’t sound convinced, but he turned toward John and let the subject of the shooting drop. “Did you get Mrs. Delancey and the children on the bus?”

“Train, actually.” John stopped scratching Bear and went to clear the plexiglass wall of the photos Finch had taped up in the course of the case. “Harder to crash in case one of Delancey’s men wants revenge. But yes, they’re safely on their way out of town.”

“Good. The crime scene units have just left; Det. Carter and Officer Laskey are making one last sweep—”

Finch was interrupted by the sound of a gasp from the tap they’d placed on Carter’s phone years earlier, while she was still chasing John as a suspected serial killer. “Laskey!” she cried, and John heard running footsteps followed by the thud of a body hitting concrete.

Wide-eyed, Finch turned back to the monitors as John rushed around the table to look over his shoulder at the feed from the surveillance camera overlooking the alley where the shooting had occurred. By the time John could see the screen, Laskey, who’d apparently been checking out the door John had used to get the surviving Delanceys to safety, and Carter were racing toward the prone form of a very big man dressed like a cowboy. This guy was easily 6'6", broad-shouldered, dark-haired, well-muscled—and beat up… not severely, but a bruise was already forming on his left cheek, and there was enough blood on his rolled-up sleeves and bared forearms and knuckles to show that he’d been in a fight. Sweat was rapidly soaking through his tan shirt, too. There was even a brown cowboy hat that had fallen nearby, with what looked like a row of silver arrowheads around the band.

“Where on earth did _he_ come from?” Finch asked. And before John could even hazard a guess, Finch entered a few swift keystrokes to split the display between current footage on one monitor and past footage on another, then backed up the past feed several minutes to watch more closely while John kept both an eye and an ear on the current proceedings.

“Is he alive?!” Laskey asked as Carter crashed to her knees by the man’s side and tried to take his pulse.

A wordless bass groan seemed to be the answer to that, and Bear whined in concern.

“ _Stil_ ,” John ordered, not looking at Bear.

Bear lay down again with a whuff of protest.

While Carter started first aid and sent Laskey to the squad car for water, John rolled a chair over to the desk and sat down, and Finch kept searching the recorded surveillance footage for where the man had come from, speeding up, slowing down, zooming in and out. “This makes no sense,” he finally murmured. “Look at this, Mr. Reese.” And he played the footage again for John at normal speed up to a point where he paused it. “Notice, there’s no sign of the man on any of the fire escapes or at any of the doors or windows to this point.”

“Right,” John agreed, because it was true.

“But look.” Finch advanced the image a frame at a time. Between one frame and the next, the man appeared in mid-air, clearly already falling.

“What the hell?”

“That’s impossible. People do not just fall out of thin air. But the video can’t have been tampered with—we can see Det. Carter and Officer Laskey moving perfectly normally.”

“Well, maybe there’s another explanation,” John suggested, although he was at a loss for what it could be. Then a _Muppet Show_ sketch came to mind and he added, “Maybe somebody just invented a working teleporter.”

“The existence of the Machine does not presuppose other science fiction technologies, Mr. Reese.”

“I was joking. Mostly.”

Carter had gotten the man talking by this point and was asking him about having been in the military, which he apparently had. “Where’d you serve?” she asked in a tone that sounded casual but that John recognized as her being in interrogator mode.

“No place… you’d have heard of,” the man replied, his breathing still labored. “None of the… big battles, like… Chickamauga or… Manassas or Bull Run.”

“Chickamauga?” Finch echoed, frowning. “Those are….”

“Civil War battlefields,” John finished for him. “He thinks he’s a Civil War veteran.”

“I suppose that would fit with his costume, especially since he’s saying he _wasn’t_ involved in any of the major campaigns of the Civil War. Perhaps he’s a reenactor from one of the sites on the frontier that saw more action against the Native Americans than between the Union and Confederacy.”

“Maybe,” John agreed, more hesitant about the _reenactor_ part than about the rest. “Doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot.”

Finch nodded unhappily. “If anything, it makes the search more complicated, whether he’s speaking in character or not. The muster rolls for the major campaigns are well documented, but I don’t know if the same could be said of the frontier units.”

It wasn’t long before Carter and Laskey started getting personal details out of the man, but the more he talked, the more confused Finch became. Frantic searching revealed neither digital footprint nor current nor past records of anyone named Cheyenne Bodie; the closest Finch could find was a mention of an unsold Warner Brothers pilot on some amateur TV historian’s blog.[1] Facial recognition software wasn’t getting him anywhere, either, although he did manage to get enough measurements that they could order Bodie some clothes if he needed them. John, meanwhile, had texted Fusco to send him back to the alley and was leaning away from teleportation and toward time travel as an explanation for Bodie’s appearance out of thin air—he had the uncomfortable sense, which Carter seemed to share, that Bodie was telling the absolute truth and wasn’t simply confusing reality with fiction.

How the hell spontaneous time travel was supposed to work, let alone how they’d get Bodie home, was a question John decided not to voice until after they’d gotten Bodie through the first few days of TBI protocols.[2] He hoped his new colleague Sameen Shaw hadn’t yet destroyed her phone, as she was wont to do at the end of every mission; wherever they put Bodie up in the short term, John could use her help in keeping watch over Bodie while he still needed to be woken every two hours.

Finally, about the time Carter sent Laskey off to wait for the ambulance, Finch sighed in defeat. “This man does not exist. Cheyenne Bodie simply does not exist. We’ll… we’ll have to create a new identity for him, but… that can’t _be_ Cheyenne Bodie because Officer Laskey associates that name with the 1880s cowboy persona.” He looked at John with an expression that meant he was just this side of a panicked meltdown.

John put a hand on his shoulder. “Finch. Tell Carter that.”

“Right, of course.” Finch pulled himself together and sent Carter a text. Then he busied himself with pulling up the websites and apps he needed to build a digital trail for Bodie’s cover identity while Carter relayed his request to Bodie.

Then Bodie sat up, clutching his head again, and said something that brought both John and Finch up short: “I’ve… been undercover a few times before.”

“Who is this guy?” John murmured.

“One of your former colleagues, perhaps?” Finch suggested, sounding half hopeful.

John shook his head. “The CIA doesn’t issue cloaking devices. Besides, if a guy like that was with the Agency, Kara never woulda let me hear the end of it.” He was secure enough about his own looks and charms, but Bodie had several inches of height and brawn on John, and given Kara Stanton’s penchant for needling him at every given opportunity, John knew _not even the best-looking field agent we have_ would have been on her list had it been true.

Just then, Fusco called because he was nearly to the scene and needed more details than John had been able to give him by text. “Carter doesn’t know I’m on the case yet,” he admitted. “She and Laskey were canvassin’ up the block when Olson and I got there.”

“That’s all right,” said John. “Just follow her lead.”

“Is this somethin’ we need to make go away?”

“No. It’s something that might actually help.”

“So whaddaya want me to do?”

“Make sure the ambulance takes him to City Hospital and treat him like you would any other witness—for now.”

“For now? What the hell do you mean, for now?”

“Call me back once he’s in the ambulance, and I’ll give you the whole story as we know it. For right now, all you need to know is that he says he’s a cowboy from Wyoming.”

“—You mean he isn’t?”

“No, he is, but it’s complicated, and we don’t know what cover identity he’s come up with in the meantime.”

Fusco sighed. “All right, I’m here. But you better have a good explanation by the time I call you back.”

“Relax, Lionel. Have I ever let you down?”

“Frequently,” Fusco replied, though there was no heat behind it, and hung up.

Meanwhile, Finch had been busily filling in forms with the details that weren’t dependent on Bodie’s cover story, things like height, weight, and hair and eye color. By the time Laskey led Fusco and a paramedic down the alley, Finch was ready to start building Bodie’s new identity as quickly as Bodie could come up with it. For his own part, John watched Bodie carefully, and while he heard Carter alert Bodie that people were coming, he saw something in the set of Bodie’s shoulders shift as he slid into whatever new character he was about to play.

And _play_ was the operative word. John had known some theater nerds in high school, the pretentious ones who aspired to Art but couldn’t play second banana to a third-rate burlesque comic, and Bodie not only nailed the persona but played it to the hilt. He might not have been comfortable on the stage, but he was a natural actor. Even his swing-and-a-miss about the Grand Hotel worked. John couldn’t help chuckling.

When Finch shot him an inquisitive look, John admitted, “He’s good.”

“He’s certainly given us a good deal to work with,” Finch agreed, typing furiously. “Creating a person from scratch takes time, as you know, especially when that requires establishing a new Social Security number, but I should have enough of the identity built in a few minutes to pass if someone other than Det. Fusco begins to look into Merritt in the next hour or two. We’ll still need to get official photos and signatures to complete his IDs, as well as fingerprints for a Georgia concealed-carry license, but those can be done after he’s released from the emergency room. In fact, I should be able to get his signature when the release papers are scanned into the hospital’s computers. I think it’s best if John Rooney is Jim Merritt’s old friend who’s called to pick him up from the hospital, and as he’s likely to be a long-term guest, perhaps he should stay at your apartment until we can find more permanent quarters for him. I’ll have Ms. Shaw pick up the necessary supplies.”

John pursed his lips and nodded as he considered the idea. “Not putting him in our usual safe house?”

Finch shook his head. “No, we’re likely to need that for our numbers. Even if Mr. Bodie should become involved in our operations, I’m sure he’ll appreciate more private accommodations.”

“Makes sense.” John stood. “I’ll go make sure my place is ready.” And he left.

No sooner had he reached the street, however, than the nearest payphone began to ring with a now-familiar urgency.

“Oh, you’re kidding,” John muttered, jogged over, and picked up the phone.

_Beep._ “ **Charlie**. Hotel. **_Echo_**. YOUNG. **_Echo_**. November. November. **_Echo_**.” _Beep_. “BRAVO. Oscar. **Delta**. Indigo. **_Echo_**.” _Beep_. 

John swore under his breath, hung up the payphone, and dialed his cell phone as he strode away. The Machine had sounded almost desperate at having to bend its programming this way, since there were no numbers associated with Bodie’s name yet, but clearly it had calculated that he was in danger too imminent to wait for the new Social Security number to go through.

“Mr. Reese?” Finch answered, surprised.

“Finch, we’ve got a problem,” John reported.

* * *

_Now_

“Much obliged, Mr. Reese.” Bodie’s handshake was firm, not crushing, but John could feel both the strength behind it and the calluses on the parts of Bodie’s hand that weren’t bandaged. Here was a man who wasn’t afraid of a hard day’s work and could handle himself in a fight—a far cry from the persona of Jim Merritt. He still smelled of horse and sweat and trail dust, too, under the gunpowder and blood and disinfectant… most of the city dwellers who’d encountered Bodie so far might not have been able to recognize all those scents, but John had known enough ranchers growing up in Washington and Colorado.

He could only wonder how much Bodie was learning about him the same way.

“In public, it’s John,” John said aloud as they ended the handshake. “John Rooney, asset manager for Crane & Associates—we met in college, at Tulane.”

“Tulane!” Bodie chuckled and shook his head. “Haven’t been to New Orleans in a fair few years. Didn’t even know actors went to college.”

“They do these days.” John turned onto another street. “What else can you tell me about Merritt?”

“He was part of a traveling show, the Thalia Reportoire Company. When I replaced him, he was performing in a play called _The Marble Heart_. You guessed right that he was a drunk, and a gambler as well, not to mention a coward. Col. Forrest said he’d deserted his post during the war, didn’t want anybody to know.”

“What was his wife’s name?”

“Nellie Barton.” Bodie scoffed. “She was a real piece of work. Had an affair with their co-star, George Willis—at least until I came along and caught her interest. They were raisin’ funds for a Confederate commander who was hidin’ out in Juarez, but Nellie tried to talk me into takin’ the money and runnin’ off to Europe with her. Said Willis was plannin’ to do the same thing.” He shook his head. “Can’t tell you how glad I was to be shed of _her_.”

John chuckled.

“I don’t know a lot else that might help you.”

“That’s all right. We can fill in the rest. Thanks. You hungry?”

Bodie hesitated. “Well, I ain’t had lunch, but… my stomach’s still none too happy.”

“I think we can find you something that’ll sit well.” A few turns later, John was pulling into a parking space outside the Lyric Diner. “They serve breakfast all day,” he assured Bodie as he shut off the engine, “and they’ve got things like soup if you want something more than pancakes.”

“Stack o’ pancakes sounds kinda good, actually.”

John had to show Bodie how to unfasten his seatbelt and where the door handle was, but once they were out of the car, Bodie followed John’s lead like a champ. Other than ordering pancakes and black coffee when the waitress prompted him, he let John carry the conversation with ridiculous college stories that never happened for either of them, reacting appropriately but not contributing much of his own accord. John had already eaten and contented himself with a slice of cheesecake, which left him plenty of time to talk.

They had almost finished eating when Finch, who had of course been listening to the entire conversation by phone, said through John’s earwig, “Mr. Reese, there’s a patrol car circling the block around the diner. I can’t tell whether they’re HR, but this is the third time they’ve passed your car. It might be prudent to leave as quickly as possible.”

John swallowed the sip of coffee he’d just taken, watched out the corner of his eye as the cruiser passed the diner again, and noticed that Bodie had noticed. He covered by asking, “So, do you ever hear from Nellie?”

Bodie seemed to fold in on himself, and it was clearly as Merritt that he answered with a quiet “No.”

“I mean, I know she left you for George—”

“George is dead, and as far as Nell’s concerned, I am, too.”

“ _Dead?_ What… what happened?”

“He got shot, that night down in Juarez. I don’t want to talk about it.” Bodie cradled his coffee cup in both hands before he drank.

“All right, I’m sorry. I just….” John broke off, pretending to realize that Bodie’s left wrist was bare of anything but the wristbands remaining from the hospital.

“What?” Bodie prompted.

“Where’s your watch?”

Bodie frowned slightly in genuine confusion and set down his cup. “My what?”

“Your wristwatch. The gold Rolex your dad gave you before you left for college.”

Bodie glanced blankly at his wrists and shook his head. “I must have lost it.”

“In a poker game?”

Catching on, Bodie threw his napkin onto the table. “Don’t start.”

“That’s what happened to your wallet, too, isn’t it?”

“John….”

“I _warned_ you about those illegal casinos last time you were here—”

“Confound it, man, I said I don’t want to talk about it!” That was just loud enough to attract attention from the neighboring tables.

John huffed and pulled out his own wallet. “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”

“The patrol car’s just turned onto 21st,” Finch reported as Bodie put his hat and shades back on. “If you leave now, they won’t know which way you’ve gone.”

John dropped a $20 on the table and herded Bodie out to the car. He might have sped slightly, but they had crossed 2nd Avenue before the cruiser turned onto 22nd again, and they were on 1st and headed uptown before Finch confirmed that they were clear.

“Do we need to take more detours, Finch?” John asked, earning him a very odd look from Bodie.

“I don’t think so,” Finch replied, “but I’ll keep you apprised.”

“Thanks.” John tapped his ear, hanging up, and glanced over at Bodie again. “I’ve got a wireless telephone in my pocket,” he explained. “It connects to a device I wear in my ear.”

“Oh,” said Bodie, although he didn’t seem to understand the explanation so much as chalk it up as another piece of the day’s weirdness. “Finch?”

“He’s a friend. You’ll meet him this evening. Carter still has your gun, by the way—she’ll bring it by after her shift.” John turned onto the nearest cross-street to start the loop back toward his loft.

“All right.” Bodie nodded over his shoulder, in the direction of the diner. “So what was all that about back there? Why’d you want people to _know_ we were leavin’?”

“In case the police came in looking for us.”

“For us? Or just for you?”

“Eh, they gave up officially looking for me last year when I was declared dead, again. But there’s an organization of corrupt cops called HR that we’re trying to bring down—Carter more so than the rest of us, although she doesn’t know that Finch and I know yet. Fusco’s probably guessed, but we haven’t talked to him about it.”

“So?”

“There were two officers circling the block when we left. I can’t be sure they actually were with HR, but we have information that your life is in danger, and the only potential threat that makes any sense is HR.”

“Why? Were they behind the shootin’ I supposedly witnessed, or was it the Russians?”

John shook his head. “No, that was us. I was helping a woman and her kids escape her abusive husband, but he caught up to us. My other colleague, Shaw, shot him in the head.”

“Well, then, what reason would HR have for takin’ any interest in me?”

John sighed. “Because one of ’em thought you were me.”

Bodie frowned. “I don’t look anything like you.”

“No, but you’re tall, dark hair, blue eyes, former Army. If they’d never shown Laskey a picture of me, you’re close enough.”

“Laskey!”

“He’s the only person it could have been. Carter confirmed it when I called her; she’s known he was working for HR from the start. That’s one reason she sent him away so she could talk to you in private. And Finch checked his phone records. He called a known member of HR’s inner circle while he was waiting for the ambulance to arrive.”

Bodie shook his head. “I knew that boy needed watchin’. Meant to warn Miss Carter, but there wasn’t a chance. Glad she already had his measure.”

John blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I know his type—barely a man, wantin’ to prove himself, but not wise enough to see when an older man’s tryin’ to use him to a bad end. Even the ones that aren’t trailin’ after the wrong types can get themselves in a mess o’ trouble if they get in over their heads. Fill ’em up with liquor an’ lies, and they’re capable of anything… even murder.”

“Well, in this case it’s more likely to be money than liquor, but still.”

“Money goes to a man’s head just as quick.”

John nodded. He was pretty well immune to that temptation himself, especially after having been homeless until Finch had rescued him, but he’d seen it work often enough.

Bodie paused, seeming to give John a searching once-over. “Anyway, what do they want you for, besides wantin’ to clean up the town?”

John smiled wryly. “Didn’t they tell you? I’m an urban legend, ‘the Man in the Suit.’”

Bodie frowned again. “Anybody can wear a suit.”

“You’d be surprised.” John’s smile faded. “Like you, I never knew my birth family. My adoptive father was a soldier, a war hero. I grew up wanting to be just like him. After he died, and then after Mom died… I got in trouble, and the judge gave me a choice. I took the Army, Special Forces. I was good at it, but after eight years, I got tired of it. Was all set to get out, marry my girlfriend, have a normal life, and all of a sudden, we were attacked. I had to reup.”

Bodie nodded slowly.

“Few years later, I was recruited as a spy and assassin by the Central Intelligence Agency—it’s… after your time. Worked for them for about five years until they tried to kill me. Since then, they’ve tried again several times, and they used some of my legit ops to convince NYPD and a different federal agency that I’m a serial killer.”

“And HR?”

“The only reason anyone in the general public knows anything about HR is that Finch and I keep getting in their way. So do Carter and Fusco. They’ve almost killed Carter twice, and they did kill her boyfriend a few months ago.”

Bodie huffed. “Woulda thought that kind of thing died with Boss Tweed. Guess cities never really change.”

“Hell, Tammany Hall outlived Boss Tweed by about ninety years, and even after it died, the mobsters kept the graft going for another couple of decades. But cities don’t change because people don’t change. That’s bad in a lot of ways… but there are ways it can be good, too.”

“Reckon I can see that.”

They had, by this point, reached the turn to head east to Chinatown, but John paused with his hand on the turn signal. “Actually… since we’re headed this way anyway… I wanna show you something.” He took his hand off the turn signal and went straight through the intersection.

“What is it?”

“Just… trust me. You’re gonna want to see this.”

Bodie lapsed into skeptical silence as John drove through the Financial District toward Battery Park. As they emerged from the maze of skyscrapers, however, Bodie glanced out his window and suddenly straightened as he evidently spotted a sign that gave away their destination.

“They finished it?” he asked, turning back toward John.

John smiled. “They finished it. Dedicated in 1886, just finished the latest restoration last year.”

Bodie swallowed hard. “You’re right, I… I _would_ like to see that.”

“The ferry ride out there would probably be too much for you right now,” John admitted as he hunted down a parking garage. “But we should be able to get a good view from the park that won’t be too hard on your eyes.”

Bodie nodded. “Thanks.”

They fell silent again as John parked and led Bodie out of the garage, across the road, and down the park paths to where the trees parted and one could see the Statue of Liberty in all its glory. Bodie gasped, slowed to a stop, and removed his hat.

“Yeah,” John whispered.

“I’d… seen a stereoscope,” Bodie admitted quietly, his voice cracking with emotion. “A few years ago, just her arm with the torch. I never dreamed….” He trailed off.

“Beautiful, huh?”

“Yeah.” Bodie nodded a moment, then gave John a sidelong look. “Worth dyin’ for.”

“She is,” John agreed, knowing neither of them meant the statue in itself.

They stood there in silence a moment longer before Bodie put his hat back on and they left the park.

When they got back to the car, however, Bodie paused and took his shades off briefly to look John in the eye. “Thank you, John.”

John smiled. “You’re welcome.”

* * *

[1] Just in case it wasn’t clear, this is me positing a difference between POI-verse and our world, in which _Cheyenne_ , the first hour-long Western on television, was wildly successful, ran for seven seasons, generated two spinoffs, and launched the screen career of the late great Clint Walker. (POI is itself a Warner Brothers show.)

[2] TBI = traumatic brain injury, better known to most of us as a concussion


	3. Adjustments

The trek up the stairs to John’s loft revealed that Bodie’s concussion was still causing him problems; John had to steady him most of the way. Fortunately, John heard nails on hardwood while he was still unlocking the door, so he was able to order “ _Stop! Zitt!_ ” before opening the door and prevent Bear from knocking Bodie over. Bear was sitting obediently but still wagging his tail furiously and whining in confusion when John did open the door and ushered Bodie in.

“ _Voorzichtig_ ,” John told Bear, closed and locked the door, and held down a hand. “ _Kom._ ”

Grinning, Bear trotted up to John for scritches. Then he curiously but cautiously approached Bodie and sniffed the hand Bodie held down to him.

“ _Hij is mijn vriend_ ,”[1] John told Bear, who promptly licked Bodie’s hand and made Bodie chuckle. “Bodie, this is Bear.”

“Hello, Bear,” said Bodie and scratched Bear’s head, much to Bear’s delight. “What breed is he?”

“Belgian Malinois. They didn’t arrive in the States until after 1900.”

Bodie nodded. “Explains why I’ve never seen one before. Trained in… what was that, Dutch? German?”

“Dutch.”

“But your accent is terrible,” Shaw called from the sitting area.

Bear galloped off to her side, and John rolled his eyes and led Bodie the same direction.

“Nice place,” said Bodie, taking off his hat.

“Thanks,” John replied. “Came with the job.” That wasn’t strictly true—Finch had given it to him for his birthday toward the end of their first year of working together—but it was close enough. “I’m sure it’s pretty different from what you’re used to,” he added.

Bodie shrugged with a wry smile. “Oh, I can sleep most anywhere.”

That wasn’t really what John had meant, but he left it for the moment because they were approaching the table, currently covered by a load of shopping bags from various high-end ‘big and tall’ stores, and coming into view of the sitting area, where Shaw was fussing softly over Bear and Finch was doing something with his laptop. One of them—probably Shaw—had tacked a white sheet up on one wall to cover the bricks, and John’s camera was sitting on the coffee table alongside some other gadgets.

“My associates,” John told Bodie as Finch twisted to look up at them. “Sameen Shaw, Harold Finch. Cheyenne Bodie.”

Bodie nodded to each of them in turn. “Mr. Finch, ma’am.”

“Hey,” said Shaw, raising her chin.

“Welcome, Mr. Bodie,” said Finch and turned far enough to shake hands. Then he gestured toward the sheet as he turned back to his laptop. “If you would be so kind, I need to take some photographs of you for your new identity cards. We’ll also need to scan your fingerprints for a few of the licenses you’ll be needing while you’re here.”

Bodie looked dubious. “Well, if you’re takin’ pictures, shouldn’t I get cleaned up first?”

“It’s not necessary for this first batch, although I will want more for other purposes after you’ve had a chance to shower and change. For the moment, speed is more essential. And cameras now are much faster than the ones you’re used to.”

Bodie still looked dubious, but he handed his hat to John and took up a position in front of the sheet. The bright backdrop made the bruise on Bodie’s cheek more pronounced, but John knew that could easily be fixed in Photoshop. After directing Bodie where and how to stand, Finch had John take the pictures. A couple of bursts (the speed of which seemed to daze Bodie) got enough headshots for the official documents, and Finch also had them get several different shots of Bodie in “costume,” with and without his hat, for fake promo posters of “The Thalia Reportoire Company in _Wagons West_ , starring James Thornton Merritt as Cheyenne Bodie.” He finished the first flyer while Shaw was using the fingerprint scanner on Bodie and printed it off for Bodie’s inspection.

“That looks right awful,” Bodie declared with an approving grin and handed it back to Finch. “No wonder it folded.”

Everyone else laughed.

“Now, if you folks’ll excuse me, I really would like to get some o’ this dust off me.”

“Of course,” Finch said, already putting the finishing touches on Bodie’s new driver’s license, as Shaw handed him the fingerprint scanner. “The rest can wait at least until after supper, if not tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. Bodie.”

Bodie nodded, and John started to lead him toward the stairs leading up to the mezzanine that housed the bathroom. But Shaw dashed over to the table and started gathering up the shopping bags, and Bodie did a double take and stopped when he realized what Shaw was doing.

“Are those all for _me?!_ ” Bodie asked.

“Gotta have something to wear,” Shaw replied, shoving a handful of Walmart bags into John’s hands. “No idea how long it’ll take us to find you a way home, _so_ Finch said to get you a variety.”

“We can return or tailor anything that doesn’t fit properly,” Finch added.

Bodie looked around at them all, clearly at a loss for words. “That’s… mighty kind of you,” he finally managed.

“Our pleasure,” John answered with a smile and motioned Bodie toward the stairs again. Shaw brought up the rear and started laying things out on a bench while John showed Bodie where everything was and how the shower worked. “Need anything else?” he asked when he’d gone over everything he could think of.

Bodie still looked overwhelmed, but he took a deep breath and shook his head. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. Thanks.”

John nodded. “We’ll leave you to it, then.” And he turned to go, shooing Shaw out the door.

“Reese?”

John turned back, eyebrows raised in question.

“Why’d the government try to kill you?”

John sighed. “I can’t give you the details without putting your life in greater danger. You might not believe me even if I did. But… remember that attack I mentioned?”

Bodie nodded once.

“After that happened, the government developed a project so secret, only eight people in the world knew it existed when it was launched. Finch built it. Shaw and her partner asked questions about it. My partner and I had contact with a piece of it that the government wanted destroyed—that was the first time they tried to kill me. The second time was just trying to finish the job. By the third time, I think they suspected I’d found out what it was.”

“Had you?”

“Not the full story. Finch told me about the project shortly after he hired me, but I didn’t find out the rest until just a couple months ago, when the project removed itself from government control.”

Bodie blinked. “Removed itself?”

“It’s a long story,” John said with a wry smile. “The government still gets the benefits, but the project is now much, much harder for anyone to abuse—our government, foreign governments, or private entities like the one we prevented from getting control of it a few months back.”

“I see,” Bodie said thoughtfully. “You don’t control it yourselves?”

“We don’t even know where it is now,” John admitted. “Even if we did, Finch deliberately locked himself out years ago. The most we can do is keep it from falling into the wrong hands.”

Bodie nodded slowly. Then he added with a knowing look, “When you’re not shootin’ abusive husbands.”

“In Shaw’s defense, the kill shot was the only real option this time. Normally I prefer to shoot ’em in the knee and leave ’em for the cops, and Shaw’s getting better about using less-lethal force.”

That surprised a laugh out of Bodie, but he nodded again. “That tells me what I wanted to know. Thank you.”

John nodded back and left, ushering Shaw down the stairs and going to the kitchen himself to start supper. “How’s it goin’, Finch?” he asked as he passed the sitting area.

“Almost finished,” Finch replied, not looking up from the laptop. “Was there a problem? You were up there for some time.”

“Nah, Bodie just wanted to make sure we’re not traitors.”

Finch turned to give John a skeptical and faintly reproving look. “You didn’t tell him about the Machine.”

“Of course not.” John got out a stock pot. “But he asked why the government tried to kill me, and I gave him as straight an answer as I could— _safely_.”

“He’s telling the truth, Finch,” Shaw chimed in as she sat down on the floor to play with Bear. “I heard the whole thing.”

Finch glanced at her before returning his attention to John. “Was he satisfied?”

John shrugged and started taking the soup ingredients out of the fridge. “Said he was.”

Finch turned back to his computer. “Well, I suppose it can’t be helped.”

“Finch, the man is 133 years and a thousand miles from home. He’s having enough trouble with the horseless carriage and the wireless telephone. You really think he’s going to buy the idea of artificial intelligence in general, let alone the Machine?”

“I’m still having enough trouble with the idea of time travel,” Finch muttered but didn’t push further.

John let the conversation drop and went back to work on the soup he’d been planning, chicken noodle soup with half-and-half added to make the broth richer—a simple, old recipe that he’d learned from his adoptive grandmother, hopefully old enough that Bodie would be familiar with it and bland enough that it would sit well on an upset stomach.[2] Ordinarily, he’d make it all from scratch, but reducing the broth would be time-consuming enough, so he was using store-bought organic broth and pre-cooked chicken. He’d just ignited the burner under the stock pot when he heard the shower turn on upstairs.

“How many people are you planning to feed, John?” Shaw asked from the floor.

“Five,” John replied. “Six if Fusco comes, but he probably won’t.”

“That’s a lot of soup for five people.”

“It looks that way now, but it’ll be about half that volume when I’m done.”

“There,” Finch interrupted with a final triumphant click of the mouse. “That takes care of everything but Merritt’s social media profiles, which will require considerably more photoshopping, and we may need Mr. Bodie to compose the captions himself for greater authenticity. For now, I need to go collect his new documentation and assemble his new wallet. I’ll be back in about an hour.” He shut his laptop, rose stiffly, and started to leave, but paused and turned back to the kitchen, eyes narrowed. “Try not to give away any more of the family secrets while I’m gone.”

“I still haven’t guessed your favorite color,” John noted mildly.

Finch rolled his eyes and hobbled out.

Clearly bored, Shaw came into the kitchen and helped herself to a beer. Then she went back around to the other side of the bar and started pestering John with questions about Bodie, the soup, the pie he started next, cooking in general, and life, the universe, and everything. John put up with it mostly as a way to keep Shaw tethered until someone else arrived or supper was ready. So it was a relief when Carter texted to say she was on her way; John took a break from rolling out the noodles to text back with the address and sent Shaw out to guide her in.

Only when Shaw was gone did Bear come into the kitchen to beg for scraps. John gave him several and noticed that the water had finally turned off upstairs. Bodie’s back must have been killing him to need that much of a soak in hot water. Of course, even if he knew how to survive a fall from a height with minimal injury, the way John had learned, he had apparently blacked out in transit, so the real miracle was that he hadn’t sustained worse injuries and had been able to stay on his feet as long as he had.

John was just starting to kick himself for tiring Bodie out when Shaw returned with Carter, who got an enthusiastic welcome from Bear before dropping an unmarked black duffle on the couch on her way to the kitchen. “Got that run through Ballistics for Finch,” she told John, pointing to the duffle as she walked away from the couch. “It’s now registered to Thalia Rep in the State of Georgia.”

John smiled at her. “Thanks, Carter. Can I get you a drink—water, pop, beer?”

Carter groaned and fanned herself with her uniform cap. “I don’t care, as long as it’s _cold_.”

“I’ll get it,” Shaw offered, quickly moving the duffle from the couch to the hall closet arsenal before coming back to the kitchen and shoving her way behind John to the fridge.

“Somethin’ smells good,” Carter added, easing herself onto a barstool.

John’s smile broadened. “Thanks! Can you stay for supper?”

“Wish I could. Laskey followed me to Mom’s house. I got out the back without him seein’, but I dunno if he’ll still be there when I get back.”

John nodded his understanding, hoping his disappointment didn’t show on his face, and swiftly cut the noodle dough into strips to drop into the boiling broth.

“You own this place?” Carter asked, accepting a beer from Shaw.

“Birthday present from Finch,” John answered.

Carter chuckled. “’Course it was. Nice view!”

Shaw closed the fridge with a quiet, appreciative curse. “It sure as hell is.”

Puzzled, John glanced over his shoulder at her, but she wasn’t looking toward a window. He followed her line of sight to where Bodie, rounding the corner of the closet, was just reaching the sitting area and saying hello to Bear again. Bodie had sensibly put on boots, jeans, and a short-sleeved maroon Western-cut shirt with pearl snaps and had rebandaged the worst of the cuts on his arms, but casual as the outfit was, it somehow took him from _trail boss_ to _matinee idol_. And if _John_ could see that, it was no wonder Shaw was practically drooling.

Carter had turned her head at almost the same time and now swiveled her stool toward the door. “Good to see you on your feet, Mr. Bodie!”

Bodie smiled at her and came over to the bar. “Evenin’, Miss Carter. Nice to see you again.”

“Can I get you a beer, Cheyenne?” Shaw offered.

“No, thank you, Miss Shaw. I could do with a cold glass o’ water, though.”

John started to tell her where the glasses were, but she already had the cabinet open when he turned to her—when she’d searched his kitchen, he had no idea, but she evidently had. With a shrug, he turned back to turn the fire down and finish putting the last ingredients into the soup pot while Shaw filled the glass from the ice maker in the fridge door. What he did say was, “Beer with a concussion, Shaw? Didn’t you go to med school?”

He could almost hear her eyeroll.

“You doin’ okay?” Carter asked gently as Bodie sat down beside her.

“Well, I think the pills have worn off,” Bodie admitted, “but at least I’ve stopped bleedin’. Sorry for gettin’ blood all over your trousers earlier.”

Carter smiled. “Don’t worry about it. There’s a reason the uniform is black. And trust me, your blood’s not even _close_ to the worst thing I’ve gotten on my clothes on the job.”

Bodie looked at John with a wry smile. “I’m afraid to ask.”

“So am I,” John agreed.

“Here’s your water,” Shaw announced as she came around the bar and set the glass in front of Bodie, then swarmed up the back of his stool to check his head.

Bodie raised an eyebrow as if to say _Really?_ but sat patiently if bemusedly as she prodded, only flinching a couple of times when her fingers touched the sorest spots.

Carter watched, amused, and drank her beer while Shaw worked. “Will he live, Sameen?” she asked when Shaw jumped down.

“Yep,” Shaw stated, then came back around to where Bodie could see her. “I’ll get you some more pain relievers.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Bodie replied.

Shaw nodded and hurried off upstairs to raid John’s medicine cabinet.

“Seriously, though,” Carter pressed, meeting Bodie’s eyes again as he took a drink of water. “Aside from the pain… are you okay?”

Bodie looked down at the glass in his hand and turned it speculatively, making the ice clink. “It’s a lot to get used to,” he confessed quietly, not looking up. “I don’t rightly know yet.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.” When Bodie looked up at her, Carter gestured toward John. “We’ve been overseas. We know how hard it can be to make that transition back, ’specially to a place like New York. But at least we know what everything is and how it works. Missin’ 133 years….”

Bodie winced and looked at his glass again. That must have been the first time anyone had actually done the math in his hearing.

Carter noticed, put down her beer, and put her hand on Bodie’s arm. “At least you know about the electric light and the telephone, right?”

Bodie smiled and looked at her again. “Yes, ma’am, I do know about those. Can’t say as I’ve used ’em much, but I have seen ’em before.”

“Puts you one up on Rip Van Winkle,” John quipped as Carter withdrew her hand, and Bodie chuckled. “What about typewriters?”

Bodie shrugged. “Again, ain’t had much call to use one, but I can in a pinch.”[3]

John nodded. “We might need you to. Depends on what Finch comes up with.”

At that, Bodie frowned and looked around. “Where is Mr. Finch?”

“Had to run some errands. Said he’d be back—” John was interrupted by the sound of the key in the lock and Bear barreling off to the front door.

“ _Af!_ ” Finch’s nasal voice commanded.

“—about now,” John finished with a smile.

“Det. Carter!” Finch called, closing the door behind him and limping toward the kitchen. “Thank you again for your assistance this afternoon.”

“Hey, no problem,” Carter replied with a smile and drained her beer. John took the empty bottle from her to wash and recycle.

“I’m glad you’re here.” When Finch reached the kitchen, he handed Carter a piece of paper. “This is Mr. Merritt’s new cell phone number.”

Carter nodded and tucked it into her shirt pocket.

Finch then held out a phone to Bodie. “This is Mr. Merritt’s new cell phone. We’ll show you how to use it later.”

Bodie raised a skeptical eyebrow but accepted the phone, looked it over, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

“And this,” Finch continued, handing Bodie a wallet, “is your new identity.” As Bodie flipped it open, Finch explained, “Driver’s license, concealed handgun licenses for Georgia and New York, Social Security card, Stage Actors Guild membership card, Tulane University alumni card, medical insurance, car insurance, credit cards, debit card for your bank account with Wells Fargo, several business cards, publicity photos, information from a handful of casinos in New Jersey, and some cash just in case you need it.”

Bodie’s brow furrowed in an expression somewhere between worry, confusion, and amazement as he thumbed through everything and counted the bills in the bill pocket. John didn’t know the conversion rate between 1880 dollars and 2013 dollars, but he did know Finch well enough to know that _some cash_ might turn out to be more money than Bodie had ever had in his life.

Finally, about the time Shaw returned with a bottle of Tylenol, Bodie looked up at Finch again, shaking his head. “You folks have been mighty generous. I don’t know as I can repay any o’ this.”

“There’s no need, Mr. Bodie,” Finch insisted. “Our only goal is to help people. You’re hardly the first person we’ve assisted in this way, and I sincerely doubt that you’ll be the last.”

“Well, at least tell me how I can earn my keep while I’m here.”

Finch hesitated. “You’ll need a good deal of rest these first few days. As for what’s to come after that… that might be best discussed over supper.”

Bodie looked a little relieved and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Y’know, everyone’s taking this whole spontaneous time travel thing _really_ well,” Shaw noted, putting the Tylenol bottle on the counter with a _clack_. “I mean, Axis II Personality Disorder, I’ve got a good reason. But nobody else is freaking out about it, either, and that’s starting to freak _me_ out.”

Bodie frowned at John in confusion. “Freak….”

“Panic,” John translated.

Bodie’s face cleared, and he turned to Shaw. “Panic won’t help us much, ma’am. Fact is, I’m here. All we can do is make the best of it.”

Before Shaw could come up with a retort, the oven timer buzzed, so John switched off the oven and the burner under the soup and took the pie out to cool while Shaw retrieved her beer.

“Listen, I gotta get goin’ before Laskey figures out he lost me,” Carter told Finch.

“Thank you again, Detective,” Finch replied. “We’ll be in touch.”

Bodie stood and ushered Carter out while everyone else said their goodbyes, then came back to take his Tylenol while Finch cleared the table and John set it. Shaw, for her part, asked Bodie some pointed questions about what hurt and where, which he answered tersely but still slipped into Cheyenne a time or two.

“I’m sure sorry,” he said, rubbing his forehead, as Shaw and Bear herded him to the table for supper. “I haven’t spoken that language since… well, since the last time I was playin’ someone else undercover. I don’t know why I keep fallin’ into it now.”

“Concussions can do weird things to you,” John noted.

“Cheyenne was basically your first language, though, right?” Shaw asked. “I mean, presumably your birth parents spoke English….”

Bodie shrugged his eyebrows. “I suppose so. Nobody left now to tell me any different.”

“But the first language you remember hearing and learning to speak was Cheyenne.”

Bodie nodded. “That’s true.”

“And you have used it in the last….”

“Four years.”

John made a mental note to find out what might have been happening in 1876 that Bodie was avoiding talking about.

Shaw sat down, which Bodie took as his cue to sit down across from her. “The place where the bushwhackers hit you is close to the language center of the brain,” she explained. “That could be why you’re sometimes defaulting to Cheyenne—at least, we _assume_ it’s all Cheyenne. What other languages do you speak?”

Bodie blew the air out of his cheeks. “Let’s see… I can converse in Arapaho and Sioux; I understand more Shoshone and Apache than I can speak; and I know just enough Spanish to trade in.”

Shaw shook her head. “Yeah, see, other than Spanish, we wouldn’t recognize any of those.”

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“Spanish, Farsi, and German.”

“Farsi?”

“Yeah. My mother was from… well, you’d know it as Persia.”

“Well, I’ll be!”

John had, by this point, served everyone and put coffee on to brew to have with dessert, so he and Finch sat down and made an effort to keep the conversation light for most of the meal. Everyone complimented John on the soup, and Bodie ate two helpings—“Guess those pancakes wore off,” he said ruefully as John handed him his refilled bowl.

“Don’t worry about it,” John assured him with a grin. “There’s enough left for tomorrow’s lunch.”

Not until pie and coffee (and sencha green tea for Finch) had been served did Finch bring up the subject of Bodie’s employment. “I believe Mr. Reese has already told you at least some of what we do,” he began. “To put it more plainly, we receive information about people who are about to be involved in violent crimes. Some are victims; some are perpetrators; some are both. We’re never certain when we begin the investigation. But our overall goal is to stop threats and save lives whenever possible.”

Bodie nodded. “Go on, I’m with you so far.”

“Mr. Reese also told you about ‘the Man in the Suit’ and the fact that because Officer Laskey mistook you for him, HR has already given orders for you to be killed.”

Bodie took a deep breath. “He… didn’t exactly put it like that, but… he did say my life’s in danger, yes.”

Finch paused. “We realize that you’re not familiar with New York or with the way everything works in this year. And of course, we don’t expect you to do much of anything until you’ve recovered from your concussion and your ribs have healed. But if you’re willing, once you’re well… perhaps we would do well to have a second Man in the Suit in the wings.”

Bodie looked at Shaw and John, considering, before turning back to Finch. “You mean a ‘two places at once’ kind of game?”

“How long would it take HR to figure out that there’s two of us?” John asked.

Finch pulled a face. “Not much telling. But ironically, that might actually put Mr. Bodie’s life in _less_ danger until they can determine whether he’s working with us or whether he’s just a copycat operating on his own.”

Bodie nodded thoughtfully. “Now, the only times I’ve seen this done, it was done with men who were doubles of each other. Reese and I can’t exactly pass for twins.”

“That shouldn’t matter,” said Finch. “Outside the police force, the only description people seem to have heard is of ‘a tall, dark-haired man in a nice suit.’ That could fit half a million men in New York.”

Bodie nodded again and spun his coffee cup pensively.

“You ever been a lawman?” Shaw asked over a bite of pie.

The corner of Bodie’s mouth twitched upward. “Some o’ my shirts still have the pinholes in ’em.”

“I’ll provide you with any equipment you may need and further cover identities in cases when we need you on the inside,” Finch continued. “And of course, I will pay you for your trouble.”

Bodie nodded once and raised his cup with a wry smile. “Well, I can think of worse ways to go.”

John clinked his cup against Bodie’s in agreement.

* * *

[1] Stop! Sit!  
Careful. Come.  
He is my friend.

[2] This is in fact a recipe that was handed down to me from my great-grandmother; it has her name in the title, but I don’t know whether she invented it or whether she was only the first person in our family to write it down.

[3] The incandescent electric light was invented in 1879, the telephone in 1876, and the first practical typewriter reached the market in 1874. None were common outside major cities in 1880.


	4. ’Tis a Puzzlement

_No… no, Morning Star, I beg you… they’ll come for you like they came for Black Kettle! There has to be a better way! No…_ no _, don’t listen to Crazy Horse… this won’t save our people…_

“MORNING STAR!!!”

“Dammit, Cheyenne, hold still!”

The shock of hearing a female voice curse that way broke through the nightmare haze enough for Cheyenne to recognize that the strong hands pinning him to the bed weren’t the same as the ones that had bound Touch the Sky to his horse and forced him to watch the slaughter of the 7th Cavalry. Wildly, he looked around and finally recognized the faces staring into his as belonging to Reese and Miss Shaw. He really was in New York, in… in… he still couldn’t admit the year to himself, but at least he wasn’t back at the Little Bighorn.

“Sorry,” he gasped and tried to relax. His head was splitting. He wouldn’t have minded if New York had turned out to be the nightmare—not that he _wanted_ to relive the Little Bighorn—but he was in too much pain for this room and the people holding him down to be anything but real.

“You awake now?” Reese asked, relaxing his hold.

Cheyenne was too out of breath to do anything but nod. Oh, his chest hurt like he’d been kicked by a mule from behind. At least this bed—what had Reese called it… memory foam?—was soft enough not to compound the pain. The same could not be said of Miss Shaw, who promptly shone a bright pinpoint… penlight, that was her word, into each eye and then told him to follow the light with his eyes. He did so, but he couldn’t hold back a groan of relief when she stopped.

He knew she was a medic, a qualified doctor—the tattoo of the Rod of Asclepius on her right forearm had told him as much, even before Reese had mentioned her having been to medical school. The _USMC_ above it had told him she was a Marine; he hadn’t known many, but he suspected that accounted for much of her uncouthness and the fact that she had a tattoo in the first place. He appreciated her competence… but he’d be lying if he said he liked her.

“How’s your pain level?” she asked, not sounding as if she particularly cared.

Cheyenne couldn’t remember the scale they’d told him to use. He decided on, “Kicked by a mule. Still not as bad as when I got caught in a cave-in. What time is it?”

“Two in the morning,” Reese answered, letting go of Cheyenne’s arm completely and sitting down on the edge of the bed. “You’ve slept nearly the full two hours. Sounded like one hell of a nightmare.”

Cheyenne nodded but decided not to elaborate. His throat hurt as if he’d been screaming for real. However much they’d been able to make out, he’d let them draw their own conclusions.

“Not time for Tylenol yet,” Miss Shaw added. “But I won’t wake you until the next scheduled check unless you want me to.”

Cheyenne sighed and scrubbed at his eyes. “Don’t think I do. Thanks.”

The mention of Tylenol brought his mind back to the puzzle he’d been working on the last time he’d fallen asleep: Mr. Finch, the boss whose authority had been stamped on his bearing and manner just as obviously as Miss Shaw wore her past on her arm. Reese had hinted that the government had tried to kill Mr. Finch over the mysterious thing he had built, just as they’d targeted Reese and Miss Shaw. Whatever they’d done had evidently left Mr. Finch permanently injured—he couldn’t turn his head and walked with a limp, when he walked at all. Cheyenne had seen the pain lines on the man’s face. Yet when he’d started to offer Mr. Finch some of the Tylenol pills, Shaw had stopped him. _Tylenol won’t even_ touch _his pain_ , she’d whispered.

“Why isn’t one o’ you with Mr. Finch?” he finally asked aloud.

“You need us more than he does,” Miss Shaw answered flatly, checking his bandages.

“Hell, for Finch, today was a _good_ day,” Reese added. At Cheyenne’s confused frown, he continued, “Finch has been in constant pain longer than I’ve known him. He’s got his own routines, his own coping mechanisms, his own pain meds that he won’t take half the time because they cloud his mind, and he hates having other people make a fuss over him. I’ve been working with him long enough to know when he needs help, even though he won’t ask for it, and when he’s doing well enough that it’s better not to try. Trust me, if this were a bad day, either I would have sent Shaw with him, or I wouldn’t have let him leave the loft.”

That filled in some blanks and rearranged some of the other puzzle pieces. Reese had his own air of authority, despite his deference to Mr. Finch, and Cheyenne hadn’t quite figured out how the two fit together. The picture was becoming clearer now.

Miss Shaw, on the other hand, scoffed. “You’d seriously inflict _me_ on your best friend?”

“Desperate times,” Reese teased back with a hint of a shrug and a ghost of a smile.

Miss Shaw snorted indelicately, and Cheyenne’s mental jigsaw puzzle rearranged itself further. The words _best friend_ shed a lot more light on the matter.

Reese returned his attention to Cheyenne. “Two more things you should know about Finch.”

“He’s got more money than God?” Miss Shaw suggested.

“That’s one of them,” Reese agreed patiently. “I don’t know how much he’s worth exactly, but he is a billionaire.”

At first Cheyenne thought he’d misheard—even Cornelius Vanderbilt, the richest man in the country, hadn’t been worth too much more than $100 million at his death in 1877[1]—but then he remembered the wallet. “I believe it. He handed me a year’s wages for pocket change.”

Reese nodded. “To him, that is pocket change. Only time I’ve ever heard him worry about how much I was spending was when I bought a box of a famous scientist’s letters at a charity auction for $10 million.”

Cheyenne stared at him.

Reese shrugged. “Long story.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask about the other thing I need to know,” Cheyenne admitted.

“Just that Finch is a _very_ private person. Even his secrets have secrets. I’ve learned just enough about him to understand why.”

“What,” Miss Shaw chimed in, “you’re not gonna share with the class?”

“No,” Reese stated pointedly.

Miss Shaw huffed. “You’re no fun.”

“If Finch wants you to know something, he’ll _let_ you find out, if he doesn’t tell you directly. But the man has very good reasons not to trust people. Hell, _you_ should understand that, Shaw.”

Miss Shaw glared at him.

Cheyenne’s headache was getting worse, which was probably a sign he’d learned as much as his brain could take at the moment. “You folks mind if I go back to sleep now?”

“Nope,” Miss Shaw stated and patted his shoulder, which should have been comforting but wasn’t. “See you in two hours.”

“Hope your next nightmare’s better than the last one,” Reese said, which was far more comforting than it sounded.

“Thanks,” Cheyenne murmured as he let his eyes close. “So do I.”

* * *

“So you know about willow bark extract,” Miss Shaw explained as she handed Cheyenne his next dose of Tylenol at the next time check. “Aspirin was invented as a safer form of willow bark, and Tylenol is a safer form of aspirin.”

Cheyenne pondered that as he washed the pills down with water. “All right,” he said after he’d swallowed.

“We still use opiates like morphine, and some that are even stronger than morphine, but there’s a much broader range of medications that relieve pain and inflammation between the two extremes.”

“What Finch usually takes is a drug that combines Tylenol with a derivative of codeine,” Reese chimed in. “But like I said, he doesn’t take it all that often, especially when we’re working a case.”

Cheyenne nodded his understanding; he did at least know what codeine was. “But not laudanum.”

Miss Shaw’s assertion to the negative was more vulgar than he’d heard even among outlaws.

“ _Language_ , Shaw,” Reese chided.

Miss Shaw’s response to that was extremely unladylike, and Cheyenne decided discretion was the better part of valor and tried to go back to sleep while they bickered.

* * *

“Seriously,” Reese was saying when Cheyenne next drifted back toward full consciousness. “Shoving a gun against his chest when he’s not really awake would be like doing the same thing to _me_ , only he’s not gonna recognize you until it’s too late.”

“It worked on Jack Salazar,” Miss Shaw returned.

“Salazar had been _shot_. Bodie hasn’t.”

“I’m just saying, there has to be a better way to snap him out of those nightmares. I mean, you know I like it rough, but that was _not_ the fun way to ride a cowboy.”

“I’m _right here_ ,” Cheyenne grumbled without opening his eyes, deeply uncomfortable with the way Miss Shaw was talking about him.

There was a pause, and then something small and cold poked his shoulder. “Open ’em,” Miss Shaw demanded.

“Not unless there’s coffee,” Cheyenne demanded back.

“It’ll be ready in five minutes,” Reese assured him.

Miss Shaw poked him again, and Cheyenne grabbed her wrist—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to immobilize—and opened his eyes to glare at her. “Ain’t you heard it’s not polite to poke a bear, _especially_ one with a sore head?”

She grinned unrepentantly. “Got your eyes open.”

“Poking bears seems to be Shaw’s specialty,” Reese noted.

Miss Shaw stuck her tongue out at him, then twisted easily out of Cheyenne’s grasp and took up the light torture again. By the time Cheyenne got the spots out of his eyes, Reese had left and returned with a large, fragrant, steaming mug of liquid sanity.

“All right,” Miss Shaw announced then, standing up, “I’m gonna go get breakfast. Be back in twenty. Don’t let him fall asleep,” she charged Reese.

“With this much coffee, I doubt that’ll be a problem,” Reese replied.

She insulted his parentage and left.

Reese set the mug on the nightstand with a sigh and adjusted Cheyenne’s pillows while Cheyenne pushed himself up to a sitting position. “I’m sorry about Shaw,” Reese said. “She’s not exactly normal.”

It took Cheyenne a moment to catch his breath and several sips of (very good) coffee to fortify him enough to ask, “What’s wrong with her?”

Reese pulled up a chair and sat down. “Think you heard her say she’s got an Axis II Personality Disorder. I’m trying to think how to explain that in terms you’d have heard before—psychiatry wasn’t exactly a popular field before the mid-twentieth century. And it’s not like she fits neatly into any one category, like sociopath.” He paused a moment to consider. “I guess I’ll start with ‘sociopath.’ That’s basically someone who’s never felt emotion of any kind, although they can fake it if they have to. My ex-partner was like that, and so was our handler—she strapped a bomb to his chest, and he killed her with it. You may have run into some sociopaths who’d turned outlaw and some who made the worst kind of cutthroat businessman.”

Cheyenne nodded slowly, thinking of examples, and took another drink of coffee.

“Shaw’s not that severe. She _can_ feel emotion, but it has to be really intense for it to register, like when the government killed her partner and tried to kill her. When it does register, it usually comes out as anger. Otherwise, she just… doesn’t care.”

Cheyenne nodded again. That didn’t improve his opinion of Miss Shaw, but it did explain a good deal. “You known her long?”

“No, just since we saved her life earlier this year. You’re lucky, by the way. The first time we met, she shot me.”

That surprised a laugh out of Cheyenne.

“She didn’t actually agree to start working with us until May,” Reese continued, “and she’s… still getting used to the way we operate.”

The name _Samantha Crawford_ suddenly came to mind. Bret Maverick had tangled with her more often than Cheyenne had—in fact, after finally stopping her from getting away with the payment she’d promised, withheld, and stolen from him repeatedly, Cheyenne had sincerely hoped he’d never see her again—but she was still the coldest, most calculating swindler he’d ever met, and he still wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she’d graduated from swindling to murder.[2]

“Reckon that explains the way she talks,” was all he said aloud.

“More the inappropriate suggestions than the coarse language,” Reese hedged. “I think the language is as much a function of her time in the Marine Corps as anything else. Carter swears, too, but not as harshly, and I’ve never heard her talk about men the way Shaw does.”

“I’ve known _saloon girls_ who’d have called that remark brazen.” Cheyenne pulled the covers higher over his bare chest, even though Miss Shaw was no longer in the room.

Reese smiled ruefully. “Yeah, that’s Shaw. I’ll tell her to back off.”

“Thanks.”

They fell into companionable near-silence then as Reese did something with his pocket telephone and Cheyenne drank his coffee and watched what little he could see of the sunrise past the buildings on the far side of the park. The sky was bleared with a brownish haze, even this early, and the constant roar of cars and honks and wails and voices continued unabated, muted though it was by the brick walls and windows of the apartment building. Cheyenne’s head and back were still throbbing, although the Tylenol had ratcheted the pain down a notch or two, and his mood was souring.

In truth, it wasn’t just the pain and Miss Shaw that were grating on him. Cheyenne hated cities in general, and New York in… in _this_ year was even worse. There were too many people too close together; the buildings were too tall and too close to the road; everything was _loud_ and hard and unfriendly; and nothing _stopped_. He knew there was nothing for it but to stay, especially now that he’d taken the job with Mr. Finch, but if he’d had the choice, he’d get on the next train west and never look back.

“Actually,” Reese said suddenly, “I’ve got an idea.”

His reverie broken, Cheyenne blinked rapidly to regain his bearings and looked at Reese. “Sorry?”

“You know what a zoetrope is, right? I mean, you’ve seen them before?”

Cheyenne nodded.

“Chronophotography?”

“Seen a couple.”

“Magic lantern?”

Cheyenne frowned, unsure where this line of questioning was going. “Yeah.”

“There’s a step up from those called _motion pictures_ or _movies_. We’ve got the technology now to combine sequential images with sound recordings to capture dramatic performances so they can be shared widely and watched again and again. And it’s cheap enough these days that anyone can do it”—here Reese held up his pocket telephone—“with one of these.”

“So?” Cheyenne still didn’t understand how one could take pictures rapidly and without glass slides, the way Reese had done yesterday, but he suspected that was beside the point right now.

“We’ve already established Jim Merritt as a stage actor,” Reese explained, “but realistically, he would have tried to break into movies at some point, probably more than once. Finch is working on building Merritt’s professional portfolio, but it’ll be a lot more convincing if he can include a ‘first look’ clip from a failed movie project—just a short scene, no more than five minutes.”

Cheyenne’s frown deepened. “What kind of scene?”

Reese leaned forward. “The kind of tense, dramatic romantic scene that gets Shaw off your back. Low light, no makeup—you don’t even have to get out of bed or do more than ad lib a few lines telling her to go to hell. Finch can make up a story synopsis to go with whatever you come up with.”

Cheyenne hummed thoughtfully and sat back. He truly hadn’t enjoyed being an actor, but if it would build his cover and get Miss Shaw to leave him alone… “We can try it.”

Reese nodded once. “I’ll tell Shaw what to do, and I’ll shoot it to where you’re both silhouetted against the window, which’ll make it harder for anyone to recognize Shaw. Might also explain why the movie never sold,” he added with a wink.

Cheyenne chuckled and considered his options. Words alone might not get through to Miss Shaw—she seemed the type to respond to a flat no with _You don’t really mean that_ —but by the time he heard the front door open and close, he’d figured out what might get his point across.

“Hope you like Mexican, Cheyenne,” Miss Shaw stated as she walked over to the bed with a brown paper bag full of something that smelled delicious.

“Hm?” Cheyenne returned. “Oh, Mexican’s fine, thanks.”

She reached into the bag, pulled out something cylindrical wrapped in tin foil, and handed it to Cheyenne, along with a small clear container of what looked like _salsa roja_. He opened one end of the foil to find a flour tortilla wrapped around a generous amount of bacon, fried potatoes, cheese, and scrambled eggs. He’d never encountered this particular dish before, but he tried it while Reese began explaining the movie scene idea to Miss Shaw, and it was pretty tasty, especially when he put some salsa on the end. By the time Reese had talked Miss Shaw into agreeing to the scene, Cheyenne had finished eating and folded up the foil to set the salsa container on.

Miss Shaw did a double take when she turned back to him. “Wow. You _were_ hungry.”

“Still am,” Cheyenne admitted, “but I reckon it’s better to wait a while ’fore I try to eat anything else.”

“So…” Miss Shaw turned to Reese. “You wanna shoot this thing now?”

Reese shrugged. “Might as well.”

Miss Shaw grumbled a little under her breath as she set the bag on the table and let Reese direct her where to sit while he lined up the image on his pocket telephone.

“That’s good,” Reese told her. “That’s the attitude. You’re having a fight—you want something from him and he won’t give it to you.”

“I’d rather not end up with any more bruises,” Cheyenne noted.

Miss Shaw grumbled again, sized him up, and put her hands lightly on his shoulders. “Ready,” she said, glowering at him.

“Bodie?” Reese prompted.

“Ready,” Cheyenne answered, glowering back at Miss Shaw.

“And… action!”

“All I ever hear from you is no,” Miss Shaw began. “Maybe I need to try another way to get you to say yes.” And she ran her hands down toward the sheet that was still covering Cheyenne’s chest.

He trapped both her hands with his left. “I’ve had about all I’m gonna take from you,” he growled and used his right arm to pull her into one almighty kiss. She was so tiny that he didn’t want to use much force, lest he hurt her, but it was still not a tender embrace.

She squeaked and struggled a little, though not as much as he was sure she could, and swore breathlessly when he let her go.

He caught her chin, more gently than the quick movement would appear to the camera, and forced her to look him in the eye—then found himself remembering a similarly tense conversation he’d had with Irene Travers when she’d wanted him to join Custer’s men in carving up Sioux territory for themselves in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty. “I’d do most anything for you,” he quoted himself, “except destroy what I believe in.”

“Then you won’t?” Miss Shaw panted angrily. “Not at any price?”

“Not for all the gold in the Black Hills.”

She pushed herself away from him slightly. “Well, maybe you just don’t love me enough.”

That was what Irene had said, and six years later, the words still stung. Cheyenne wished he were standing at the door so he could leave after his next line and slam it behind him. Instead, he pushed Miss Shaw away a little further, to the point where she was halfway standing, and snarled what he’d said then: “Maybe the shoe’s on the other foot.”

“Cut!” Reese interrupted.

Miss Shaw’s legs gave out, and she crumpled to the floor beside the bed with a curse and started fanning herself.

Reese looked at her and did something with his pocket telephone. “I don’t think we need another take. Just sent that to Finch.”

“That’s the only kiss you’ll ever get from me, Miss Shaw,” Cheyenne stated. “Hope you enjoyed it.”

“Um,” Miss Shaw gasped. “Yeah. Okay. Whoo. Point taken.” She cleared her throat, used the hand Cheyenne held out to her to leverage herself to her feet, and went back to the table. “I’ll just, um… eat outside.” And she took her own foil package and left.

Reese watched her go before turning back to Cheyenne with a look of painful innocence. “You want another burrito?”

It was all Cheyenne could do not to laugh out loud as he accepted.

* * *

At the library, Harold had worked through the night building social media profiles and a professional website for James Thornton Merritt, partly to get the work done and partly so that he wouldn’t lie awake brooding over this latest number. The more time he spent tracking down suitable stock photos into which to photoshop Mr. Bodie, the less time he had to worry about how Mr. Bodie had managed to arrive in the present so suddenly and how in the world they were going to send him back to his own time. And finding the right balance between past success and present obscurity for Merritt, Thalia Rep, and Merritt’s co-stars, all of which had to be built from scratch, helped postpone the question of why none of the people Mr. Bodie had mentioned having known, apart from big names like Cole Younger, seemed to have existed even in the 1870s.

The notion of an _alternate universe_ kept niggling at the back of Harold’s mind, no matter how he tried to squash it. He didn’t want to believe such things were possible. And yet… even the Machine had found no trace of Mr. Bodie before his abrupt and unquestionably real appearance that day, and he spoke of _Juarez_ when he should have known the city as _El Paso del Norte_ , and other details of his past simply didn’t square with known history. None of it made any sense.

Harold didn’t have time to worry about it. He had connections to create, apartments to scout, and a guitar and recording equipment to source because Mr. Bodie had mentioned over dinner that Merritt had been a song-and-dance man. Video of Mr. Bodie dancing might not be called for, but if they could persuade him to record some songs, it would be simple enough to release an online album under Merritt’s name and even offer CDs on Merritt’s website.

While Harold worked, he was also keeping an ear on the proceedings in Mr. Reese’s loft, just in case anything of interest came up in conversation. The nightmare that caused Mr. Bodie to wake up screaming in Cheyenne certainly qualified, but it would be hours before it would be sensible to send the recording to anyone… and where could he send it without raising too many questions? Cheyenne was a dying language, so a new recording of someone speaking it with native fluency would be suspect, especially if the recipient could somehow tell that the speaker was white. The conversations about Harold’s own well-being, on the other hand, were rather touching, and he found himself glad to have Mr. Bodie as a new ally… especially since he seemed to share Harold’s opinion of Ms. Shaw’s capacity for vulgarity.

Harold was just putting the finishing touches on George Willis’ obituary around 5 a.m. when there was a familiar chime, followed by Mr. Reese’s quiet voice on the speakerphone asking, “Finch?”

“Good morning, Mr. Reese,” Harold answered. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s my watch, and I needed something to keep me awake, so I did some digging. Found a Cheyenne dictionary online. And I think I know what Bodie’s nightmare was about.”

“Oh, really?”

“There were two words that he repeated: _a’áahe_ , which means ‘no,’ and _Vóóhéhéve_ , which means ‘Morning Star’—it’s the Cheyenne name of a chief better known by his Sioux name, Dull Knife.”

Harold’s eyes widened. Chief Dull Knife College was where he’d considered sending the recording before he’d talked himself out of it.

“Once I had that to go on, I was able to identify a couple of other names: _Mo’ȯhtávetoo’o_ was Black Kettle, the Southern Cheyenne peace chief whose village was slaughtered by Custer at the Battle of the Washita River in 1868, and _Tȟašúŋke Witkó_ was the Sioux chief Crazy Horse.”

Harold was glad he was already sitting down. “Dull Knife was one of the Northern Cheyenne chiefs allied with Crazy Horse….”

“And Bodie was trying to tell him not to do something. Finch, I think Bodie was trying to prevent the Little Bighorn—but probably not out of any affection for Custer. If he was appealing to the memory of Black Kettle, my guess is that he was trying to stop Dull Knife from doing anything to earn a reprisal attack from the Army.”

“Obviously, he failed. The question is whether it was only a nightmare or whether any of it really happened.”

“Oh, it happened, all right. Remember, Bodie said he last spoke Cheyenne while undercover four years ago, which for him was 1876, the year of the Little Bighorn. And it was after the Little Bighorn that Ranald Mackenzie forced the Northern Cheyenne to surrender after an attack on Dull Knife’s band. Between that attack, the conditions on the reservation in Oklahoma, and Dull Knife’s flight back to Dakota Territory, hundreds of innocent Cheyenne lives were lost that theoretically could have been saved if Bodie had talked Dull Knife out of working with Crazy Horse.”

Harold slumped back in his chair. “No wonder he has nightmares.” He turned to look at his own wall of nightmares, the list of irrelevant numbers he hadn’t been able to save before John had surfaced in New York and agreed to be his partner. Together they’d saved so many people in the last two years, and yet….

“Figured you’d understand,” John said gently. Then he added with an undercurrent of wry humor, “Better than Shaw would, anyway.”

Harold scoffed and got up to move around. “I do hope Ms. Shaw has been sufficiently shocking for one night.”

“I dunno,” John said in all seriousness. “Think she’s hoping to violate professional ethics and sleep with her patient.”

“That would be a very bad idea, John.”

“I know, and I don’t think he’d go for it. Problem is how to convince her to back off.”

Harold grimaced and hobbled over to his tea station to start a fresh cup brewing. “I don’t have eyes on the room—what are the sleeping arrangements?”

“He’s on the bed. We each have a pallet on the floor on either side.”

“Perhaps it would be better for her to go home.”

“As soon as the first twenty-four hours is up and the danger of sudden death is reduced. But I’m not sure that’s going to solve anything.”

“This isn’t exactly a problem I’ve had,” Harold admitted. Aside from some brief flings in college, which hadn’t been as frequent or as intimate as Arthur Claypool had long assumed, Harold’s only real girlfriend had been Grace Hendricks. Nathan Ingram had always been the one to whom girls flocked, with his good-ol’-boy charm and that hint of Texan drawl in his speech. Yet Harold couldn’t remember even Nathan having had a woman like Ms. Shaw throw herself at him when he didn’t return the interest.

“Well, keep the line open, Harold,” John sighed. “If I come up with anything, you and Bodie will be the first to know.” And he hung up, knowing that Harold could still hear everything through the phone’s microphone.

Not half an hour later, while Harold was trying to assemble a decent-looking photo gallery for Merritt’s website, Ms. Shaw woke up and started arguing with John over the best way to wake Mr. Bodie if he had another severe nightmare. Not only was Harold stunned by her crudity, but Mr. Bodie happened to waken at the worst possible moment. Harold wished fervently that he’d already given Mr. Bodie an earwig and could apologize privately, but he was moderately relieved when John apologized the moment Shaw was out of the room.

Shortly after John and Mr. Bodie let their conversation lapse, Harold got a text from John: _Still there?_

_I can’t believe she *said* that_ , Harold texted back.

_Told you. What are you working on?_

Harold looked back at the work he’d abandoned in his shock. _Photo gallery for Merritt’s website._

_Could you use some stills of Merritt brooding over his coffee?_

Harold glanced at another monitor, where one of his Photoshop creations was still displayed. It wasn’t nearly as convincing as an actual picture of Mr. Bodie would be. John’s cell phone camera wasn’t as high a quality as his Leica, but it would do for photos meant for online display.

_Yes, please_ , he sent back.

John responded with a slew of both portrait and landscape images of Mr. Bodie sitting up in bed and staring pensively out the window, artfully framed by the brick wall and headboard behind him and lit by the half-light of dawn. The long part of his hair, normally kept slicked back, had fallen into his face on his right side, though not far enough to obscure his eyes, and the only other color in the frame came from the blue sheets and the oversized red mug in his hand. They reminded Harold of Nathan, somehow, although Nathan had been fair where Mr. Bodie was dark. In fact, as Harold picked the best shots to add to the gallery, he thought the pictures looked rather like the result of a professional photoshoot, or else…

_Movie stills?_ he texted to John. It wouldn’t be the sort of movie Harold preferred, probably more along the lines of _Death Wish_ , but he could see the potential commercial appeal, although the project would obviously have to have failed to find a distributor.

John didn’t text back right away. When he did, his response was, _Remember how Don Lockwood proved he was the greatest actor in the world?_

It took Harold a moment to place the _Singin’ in the Rain_ reference to the scene where Gene Kelly, as Don Lockwood, and Jean Hagen, as Lina Lamont, had an argument while filming a love scene for _The Dueling Cavalier_. The scene had ended with a passionate kiss, and after the director called “Cut”:

> “Oh, Donnie,” Lina gasped, “you couldn’t kiss me like that and not mean it just a teensy-weensy bit!”
> 
> “Meet the greatest actor in the world!” Don shot back. “I’d rather kiss a _tarantula!_ ”
> 
> Lina giggled prettily. “You don’t mean that.” 
> 
> “I don’t—” Disgusted, Don turned to one of the prop men. “Hey, Joe, get me a tarantula.” 

Harold considered before replying, _I’m not sure where to get a tarantula on short notice._

“Actually,” John said aloud, clearly addressing both Harold and Mr. Bodie, “I’ve got an idea.”

Harold had no time to protest before John began outlining his plan, and once Mr. Bodie agreed, Harold’s opinion was moot. He could only watch in fascinated horror as Mr. Bodie unknowingly went for the Lockwood option, although the kiss came at the beginning of the scene instead of the end. Ms. Shaw was no Lina Lamont, of course, and quickly pushed the fake film’s rating to an R, but Harold couldn’t help being impressed by how handily Mr. Bodie took control of the scenario and both made his point to Ms. Shaw and created an intense character that really would fit in a _Death Wish_ or _Walking Tall_ type of film. Granted, they had only one camera angle, but it would take only minor editing to make the clip seem believable… and it might give them plausible deniability once the second Man in the Suit made his appearance.

Harold was trying to come up with a decently bad synopsis for this theoretical film when Ms. Shaw called. “Finch,” she asked in a tone just short of a whine, “you’re not _really_ going to post that online, are you?”

“Mr. Reese did make a persuasive argument for doing so,” Harold answered.

“But… but Cheyenne….”

“Mr. Bodie may have been raised by the Indians, Ms. Shaw, but he’s still very much a nineteenth-century gentleman. You, on the other hand….”

Ms. Shaw spat an insult worthy of Det. Fusco and hung up. It may have been a function of having been up all night, but Harold was inordinately amused.

* * *

[1] According to the articles I’ve found online, Vanderbilt’s estimated net worth was over $200 billion in 2014 dollars—more than Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos combined were worth in 2014—which should give you a sense of both the scale of his wealth and the severity of inflation since 1877.

[2] _Cheyenne_ 2.1 “The Dark Rider” is the first evidence that _Cheyenne_ and _Maverick_ exist in the same universe. _Maverick_ creator Roy Huggins wrote the script for “The Dark Rider,” which introduces Samantha, and reused it for _Maverick_ 2.20 “Yellow River,” where the party being conned was Bart Maverick and the con woman is a different character. But Bret matches wits with Samantha in four episodes in the first two seasons of _Maverick_ , and Bart repeatedly asks the woman in “Yellow River” whether she knows Samantha. (Cheyenne later appears briefly in the mega-crossover _Maverick_ episode 4.2 “Hadley’s Hunters,” which makes the shared universe official.)


	5. Fresh Eyes

Cheyenne’s life fell into an easier routine after that first day, especially once he was out of danger from the concussion and Miss Shaw no longer needed to stay close by. There was still a considerable amount of settling in to do, of course, and fittings for suits and a ballistic vest and a shoulder holster, and he’d just about learned his way around Reese’s gigantic apartment when Mr. Finch declared him well enough to live alone and gave him his own apartment in Midtown, which was smaller but no less fancy. Reese and Miss Shaw also supplied him with his own arsenal of handguns and repeating rifles, all very different from what he was used to, and Reese took him to a firing range most Saturdays to help him get comfortable with the weapons. But once Jim Merritt’s life was sufficiently well constructed, Cheyenne’s main duty was studying both the layout of New York and enough of how modern life ran to be adequate backup if and when Mr. Finch called him into service.

That gave him an excuse not to go out on his own much, for which he was grateful. He still hated New York, the more so the more he learned about its criminal element, and he was a long way from comfortable with most of the technology that seemed to be everywhere. He also hated the fact that he couldn’t carry a gun openly, even with a permit—in fact, the sheer number of rules and regulations meant to stop people from living as they pleased boggled his mind. And he wasn’t particularly looking forward to skulking around town wearing a suit that looked like something to get buried in, with his gun tucked under his _arm_ (he was still working on drawing from there with anything like his usual speed) and no hat. He could wear his usual hat under other circumstances, of course, but it was distinctive, and Reese didn’t wear a hat at all, so Cheyenne couldn’t wear one with the suit. Reese also kept his gun holstered at the small of his back, but Cheyenne didn’t feel safe having to reach that far, despite Reese’s repeated assertion that speed of draw hardly ever mattered anymore.

Even so, there were things Cheyenne appreciated about the present day, and a vest that stopped bullets was at the top of his list, followed closely by air conditioning and indoor plumbing. He also discovered that he liked hamburgers, hot dogs, and Italian and Chinese food, although he couldn’t stomach falafel or shawarma, despite Fusco’s best efforts. And while he didn’t enjoy television all that much, he did accept a radio so that he could listen to the baseball games… when Reese didn’t take him to one in person, that is. Modern professional games had changed a lot from the way Cheyenne had learned to play in small towns and forts across the frontier, and actually being at the stadium wasn’t as pleasant because of the crowds, but it was still a fun sport to watch and listen to.

There was an upside to being Jim Merritt, too, the same one there had been the first time: people seemed to like to hear him sing.[1] Once Cheyenne’s ribs had healed enough that he could take deep breaths without being in agony, Mr. Finch had supplied him with a guitar (he had learned to play but had never owned one before) and a home studio and asked him to record some songs, and while Reese had had to handle the technical side, Cheyenne had gladly recorded practically every song he knew. Mr. Finch had then arranged the sale of several “albums” with a good twenty songs on each—Cheyenne didn’t know why he’d expected single-song wax cylinders when everything else had moved on so far, but there it was—and Reese had taken some photos of Cheyenne with his guitar to advertise them, and apparently they sold reasonably well. The official story was that Thalia Rep was using the proceeds to recoup the losses from _Wagons West_ , but actually, Mr. Finch used them to endow a scholarship fund for young scholars among the People to study first at Chief Dull Knife College and then at the university of their choice. Cheyenne had been moved to tears not only to learn that there _was_ a college named after Morning Star—in Montana, no less—but also to be able to help young people study there, and Reese had helped him arrange to send what he could spare of his own wages into that fund as well.

“Do you think Mr. Finch’ll mind?” Cheyenne had asked at one point.

Reese had chuckled. “Finch knows I only keep 10% of what he pays me and give the rest to charity. Not only does he not mind, I think he’s glad.”

Still, Cheyenne had the nagging sense that God, or Maheo or whatever power had sent him here, had meant him to do more than just sit around studying maps and singing songs and learning how to work one of these newfangled… saving-typewriters.[2] Whatever that purpose was, he hadn’t hit on it yet. Even the idea of being the second Man in the Suit didn’t seem quite like the full story.

* * *

Cheyenne had been in New York about six weeks, long enough for children to start back to school and for the team to need him as an extra gun on a couple of cases, when a knock at the door one Saturday morning turned out to be Miss Carter, who had a courier’s bag slung over her shoulder. Wide-eyed and wearing a silly smile, she held up one of his albums on what they called a compact disc.

“May I have your autograph, Mr. Merritt?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at him.

“Why, of course, dear lady!” he replied, and they both laughed as he ushered her in and offered her coffee. He did sign the disc, and then they sat and chatted amiably about light subjects like her son Taylor’s entering the eleventh grade and Cheyenne’s opinion of who might be going to the World Series.

The conversation lapsed when he went to the kitchen to refill both their mugs, however, and when he came back, Miss Carter’s smile seemed strained. So as he handed back her mug and sat down again, he said, “Much as I enjoy your company, ma’am, I suspect this isn’t just a social call.”

She took a fortifying sip, swallowed, and answered, “No. I, uh… I need your help with something.”

He sat back and waited.

“I guess our mutual friends have told you about HR.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We’ve been after them for some time, but every time we think we have them stopped, they rebuild.” She sighed. “Right now, I’m looking into the murders of two of my friends on the force. Bill Szymanski was a detective with the Organized Crime task force. HR tried to frame him, and when that didn’t work, they killed him. And then they killed the narcotics detective they’d used to orchestrate the frame, Cal Beecher. He was….” She paused, looking away both to think and to blink back tears. “I guess you’d say he was my gentleman caller. We’d had our disagreements, but… I was just beginning to hope we could work things out, and then….” She broke off again, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what else there was to be said.

She took a deep breath. “The point is, HR keeps rebuilding because we never manage to cut off the head. Looking into these two murders is getting me closer, but… I just… I need some fresh eyes on the case, and I wondered….”

“I’m not the best detective in the world,” he cautioned. “But if I can help you, I’d be happy to.”

She smiled, relieved. “Thanks.” She reached down to the bag she’d dropped beside her chair. “Mind if we do this at the table? Might be easier to spread out there.”

He agreed with a nod, and they adjourned to the dining room, where she laid out what she knew, which was fairly complicated in terms of who she knew was complicit and whom she suspected. Laskey, it seemed, reported either to a Det. Raymond Terney or to an Officer Patrick Simmons; both were in HR’s inner circle, and Simmons appeared to be the ramrod of the whole operation. But try as she might, Miss Carter hadn’t been able to pin down who Simmons reported to.

Cheyenne drank his coffee, listened, and considered. When she’d finished, he suggested, “Let’s start with the first murder—what did you say his name was?”

“Szymanski.” She sighed heavily. “Szymanski took the lead in arresting Peter and Laszo Yogorov, sons of Ivan Yogorov, who was the head of the Russian mafia until Elias had him killed. HR struck a deal with Peter: they’d get him and his brother out of jail if the Russians would partner with them. But in order to do that, they had to get rid of Szymanski. First they tried planting some dirty money on Szymanski, but I managed to prove that it wasn’t his. The same day he got out of jail, he and Melinda Wright, the assistant DA assigned to the Yogorovs’ case, were invited to dinner with Alonzo Quinn, who’s the mayor’s chief of staff.”

He nodded slowly, not liking where this was going.

“The official story was that someone wearing a mask broke in during the meal and shot all three of them. Szymanski and Wright were killed with two shots to the chest each; Mr. Quinn got shot once in the right shoulder. Then the shooter ran out the back of the room.”

He frowned. “That’s kinda strange, wouldn’t you say?”

She froze. “What?”

“Well, even with a mask on, why would the killer leave a live witness?”

Her eyes widened in horror. “ _Quinn_ ,” she breathed, looking down at the chart she’d brought. “He… he was Cal’s godfather….” She grabbed a clean sheet of paper and a pen and began sketching a rectangle with a circle near one corner.

“Ma’am?” he asked in concern.

“Hold on.” She wrote _Bookcases_ along one edge of the rectangle near the circle, _Window_ on the next side, and then _Q_ , _W_ , and _S_ around the circle with _Q_ next to _Window_ , _W_ a quarter away next to _Bookcases_ , and _S_ directly across from _Q_. As an afterthought, she labeled the locations of the doors, one directly behind _S_ and one opposite _Bookcases_. “I don’t have access to the file anymore,” she said then, “but I remember the pictures of the crime scene.”

He studied the diagram, then picked up a pencil to point with so as not to smudge the ink. “You say these two were shot in the chest,” he said, pointing to _S_ and _W_ , “and Quinn was shot in the shoulder.”

She nodded.

“Well, now, if the shooter was standin’ here”—he pointed to a spot behind the empty seat at the table—“or fired from the back doorway with a rifle, there’s no reason why he couldn’t have killed Quinn _before_ he ran. If he’d shot from the main doorway, he’d have hit Szymanski in the back. If he’d shot from the window, he’d have hit _Quinn_ in the back.”

“But if… if Quinn was the one shootin’ from over _here_ ….” She pointed to a spot between Quinn’s seat and the bookcases and traced lines of fire without touching the pen to the paper.

“Who was the first on the scene?”

“Terney. He was the lead on Cal’s murder, too. And then he set me up on that guy I shot in self-defense.” She threw down her pen. “That’s what happened. Quinn shot them, and Terney shot Quinn at his own request.”

“Might be tough to prove, though.”

“Especially if the Russians gave Quinn enough money to make the forensics reports go away.” She shook her head and looked up at him again, lips trembling as she fought tears. “Quinn had them kill his own _godson_ just ’cause Cal asked the wrong questions!”

His heart ached for her. “We should talk with our friends.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head again, determined. “No. I gotta get evidence that will stand up in court.”

“Well, they’ll be more help to you in that than I will. I don’t know this city.”

She looked at him again. “I know, but the way they get information won’t pass muster with the DA, not to mention the fact that there’s people out there tryin’ to kill them, too. I gotta—”

She was interrupted by the door opening to admit Reese, who had his own key and was carrying several white bags that appeared to be full of food. He closed the door behind him but paused in the doorway and looked from Cheyenne to Miss Carter and back several times before asking, “Carter?”

“We were just talkin’ about this case she’s tryin’ to build against HR,” Cheyenne said before Miss Carter could answer. “We think we’ve worked out who the boss is.”

Reese strode quickly into the dining room. “Who?”

“Alonzo Quinn,” Miss Carter reported.

“The mayor’s guy?” Reese dropped his bags on the near end of the table and came around to look over Cheyenne’s shoulder.

She sighed. “John….”

“I can call Zoe,” Reese offered. “Find out what dirt she’s got on him.”

“She’s not gonna know the kind of dirt that’ll get us close. Quinn’s too careful for that.”

“But she may know something that could get the ball rolling.” When she huffed, Reese pressed, “We have to start somewhere.”

She shook her head again. “There is no _we_ here, John. I know you wanna help, and I appreciate it, I do. It’s just….”

“You don’t trust us?”

“No, I do. But I have to get the kind of evidence the DA will accept, and… I don’t want to risk anyone else’s life on this.”

“I’d say it’s a little late for that, ma’am,” Cheyenne noted quietly. HR seemed to have lost interest in him for the moment, but it was safe to say he’d be back on their kill list the moment they worked out that he was working with Reese, and he didn’t think Miss Carter was ignorant of that fact.

“And it’s not worth losing _your_ life to protect ours,” Reese agreed. “What would that do to your son?”

Miss Carter wilted and lost her battle against the tears.

Reese put a hand on her shoulder. “Joss. Let us help you. Please.”

She drew a ragged breath and nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

Reese smiled tightly and squeezed her shoulder.

“We need a Plan B in case Zoe _doesn’t_ come through,” she continued. “I don’t know about Elias….”

“No. He told Harold back in April he didn’t know who the head of HR was.” Reese looked at her narrowly. “You know how to contact him, don’t you?”

Instead of answering, she said, “ _Any_ way, there’s Laskey. I don’t think he knows much, but I do think I can flip him into an asset. The question is what the best way to use him would be.”

“Don’t do it yet.” Reese sat down on the other side of Miss Carter. “We may need him to feed false intel to HR on a future case. When you do flip him, though, he might be the person to have shadow Simmons or Terney.”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“How can I help?” Cheyenne asked.

Reese looked across at him. “Well, for one thing… I think it’s time you met Zoe.”

* * *

Meeting Zoe Morgan, which happened the following Wednesday evening after Miss Carter finished her patrol shift, was an occasion for the suit. Mr. Finch was tied up with other business, and Miss Shaw was unreachable by choice, but Cheyenne and Reese met Miss Carter and Fusco at another fancy apartment with much more sophisticated locks and (so Reese said) bulletproof glass in the windows. Reese called it a safe house, one of several Mr. Finch owned around the city. Cheyenne privately thought such precautions were better suited for a cabin in the Badlands, which would have the added protection of stout log walls and a remote location, but no one had asked him.

Reese had just started coffee when the door opened again, and Cheyenne stood respectfully as soon as he saw that the person coming in was a lady, a petite brunette in spike heels, with intelligent dark eyes and a bearing that bespoke power. He couldn’t say he cared much for the tight-fitting dress she was wearing—she would have looked far lovelier in a high-collared taffeta gown, even one of the new Natural Form gowns that had been coming into fashion when he’d left home—but there was no question that she was someone to be reckoned with.

“So, this is the elusive Mr. Merritt,” she said as she came down the stairs into the main living area.

Cheyenne nodded once, feeling a bit awkward. “Ma’am.”

“Zoe Morgan.” Miss Morgan strode over to Cheyenne and shook his hand. Then her eyes narrowed as she studied his face before pronouncing, “There is no way in _hell_ you’re a professional actor.”

“Zoe, be nice,” Reese chided from the kitchen.

Startled, Miss Morgan looked toward the kitchen, then back up at Cheyenne. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like _that!_ It’s just—a guy with your looks? You would have been cast as Superman a _long_ time ago.”

Cheyenne smiled wryly. “No offense taken, Miss Morgan. Actin’s about the only profession I’ve tried an’ couldn’t stand.”

“Hey, can we get on with this?” Fusco interrupted. “I’m supposed to pick up my son from his friend’s house in an hour.”

“Quinn being HR makes sense of a lot of what I’ve heard about him,” Miss Morgan began as Cheyenne ushered her over to the sofa. “He’s in a position that naturally puts him in contact with a lot of power players, so it’s tough to tell which are legit and which are HR. But at least one of my informants has seen him meeting with Simmons.”

Most of what followed meant absolutely nothing to Cheyenne, though it clearly meant a great deal to Fusco, who’d been undercover with HR, and to Reese and Miss Carter. Cheyenne tried to keep up in case he needed the information at some point, but it wasn’t too long before he began feeling completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of unfamiliar names and retreated to the kitchen both to get more coffee and to get out of the way.

Reese came after him a few minutes later. “You all right?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Cheyenne confessed. “I don’t know who any o’ these people are or what they’ve done. All I’m hearin’ is that the corruption could be harder to root out than we thought.”

Reese nodded. “That’s the short version, yeah.”

“So how much of the detail do _I_ really need to know? You an’ Miss Carter are the ones goin’ in with the shovels an’ torches.”

Before Reese could answer, they heard a series of piercing tones from Miss Carter’s radio, which she’d brought in with her. A second after it finished, the same series sounded again.

“What’s that?” Cheyenne asked.

“Fire station tones for Midtown,” Reese answered, rushing out of the kitchen.

Cheyenne followed just in time to hear the dispatcher saying, “All available units, please respond to”—followed by the address for Cheyenne’s apartment complex. “Explosion and fire in one of the apartments.”

Cheyenne looked at Reese in horror. “A bomb?”

“Probably,” Reese agreed.

Cheyenne sat down hard on the sofa. He’d lost everything before—he’d been burned out by claim jumpers before—but to have his new home bombed this way, knowing what a narrow miss it had been for him to have gone out on an evening when he’d normally be home, never mind the danger to his neighbors—

“Ooh, hold on,” Miss Carter said, putting her suddenly buzzing pocket telephone on the coffee table. The screen read _Cloned Phone: Raymond Terney, Call Connected: Simmons_.

Reese tapped his ear device and took his own telephone out of his pocket. “You there, Finch?” he asked before activating the speaker.

“Always,” Mr. Finch replied. “Working on the security camera footage now.”

“Yeah?” said a male voice from Miss Carter’s telephone.

_Terney_ , Miss Carter mouthed, probably for Cheyenne’s benefit.

“We got a problem,” said a second, hoarse male voice, which must belong to Simmons. “Where are you?”

Terney replied with an address Cheyenne thought was in Hell’s Kitchen. Simmons demanded that Terney meet him at another address that was only a few blocks away. Terney agreed and hung up.

“Oh, this is strange,” said Mr. Finch. “I’ll have to double-check with other cameras….”

“What?” Fusco asked.

“It looks like the fire is in a ground-floor apartment, on the opposite side of the courtyard from Mr. Bodie’s.”

Hope flared in Cheyenne’s chest—his apartment was on the fifth floor. “You mean… my place is safe?”

“I believe so,” Mr. Finch said. “That could be why Officer Simmons thinks HR has a problem. Keep listening while I try to access more cameras.”

The next few minutes were filled with footsteps and radio traffic—the ambulances were reporting only smoke inhalation injuries, which was a further relief—until Simmons spoke again from Miss Carter’s telephone: “Over here.”

“Hey,” Terney answered. “What’s the problem?”

“ _This_ idiot,” Simmons snarled, accompanied by a dull metallic thunk and a groan. It sounded to Cheyenne as if Simmons had shoved someone against something metal, like a car, but he couldn’t be sure. “You wearin’ a radio?”

“Nah,” Terney admitted casually, which made it sound as if Simmons were pushing someone else around. “What happened? What’d he do?”

“Threw a firebomb at Jim Merritt’s apartment building.”

“Merritt?! I thought you canceled that hit!”

“Eh, put a hold on it until we could find out for sure whether he _is_ the Man in the Suit, workin’ for him, or just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. The boss still ain’t sure. But _this_ punk”—Simmons apparently shoved the third man again—“don’t know how to follow orders.”

“Your orders only matter when the Bratva says they do,” the third man finally said breathlessly. He sounded American, but there was still a trace of something foreign in his accent. “HR put Russians on the force to cement our alliance, but you forget that our allegiance is to the Bratva first.” He might have gone on, but that statement was followed by the distinct sound of one man punching another in the gut.

“Hey, hey, Simmons, take it easy,” Terney interrupted. Apparently addressing the third man, he added, “Are you tryin’ to tell us that _Yogorov_ ordered a hit on Merritt?”

The third man coughed. “Like Old West,” he wheezed, sounding more Russian than before. “Is ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive.’ Merritt has been seen with Carter. I took the chance.”

“And loused it up worse than the hit on Elias,” Simmons growled. “Not only did you get caught on camera, our man at the RTCC says Merritt ain’t even home.”

“What?!” Terney exclaimed. “Wait, what—when—”

“Called me when he saw Peterson here prowlin’ around the building. He says Merritt left an hour ago, dressed for a night on the town—probably headed to a casino in Jersey. Peterson didn’t even get the right apartment! What he hit was the model, and none of the apartments surrounding it are occupied!”

“No,” Peterson gasped. “No, I hacked the building records—I was _sure!_ ”

“So we don’t get the Suit,” Simmons went on. “We don’t get Merritt. We don’t get Carter. We don’t get _anybody_. All we get is you, _on video_ , bombin’ an empty apartment, thanks to Peter” (here he swore) “Yogorov thinkin’ he knows better than me, and if Merritt’s even half as smart as he looks, he’ll know we’re after him, which means he’ll move, which means we’ll _lose him_.”

“He’s still a witness in the Delancey case,” Terney noted.

“Commissioner ordered that case closed yesterday,” Simmons countered. “Merritt’s got no reason to report his new address to anyone. This whole thing is FUBARed”—there was a choking noise, probably from Peterson—“and it’s all _your_ fault.”

“ _Nyet_ ,” Peterson pleaded as best he could. “ _Nyet, pozhalyista_ ….”[3]

“So long, Petrovitch,” Simmons sneered, and then there was a shot, followed by a silence.

Terney sounded oddly unconcerned a moment later when he asked, “Whaddaya want me to do with ’im?”

“I’ll handle it,” said Simmons. “Give ’im to Yogorov as a reminder. Then we need to make sure the others are reliable.”

“Laskey is. Reports about Carter like clockwork.”

“Good. If he asks, Peterson ate somethin’ that didn’t agree with him.”

Terney chuckled. “What about Merritt?”

“We back off. Make sure everyone understands that. If he’s _not_ the Suit, we don’t need to give ’im any reason to change that.”

“All right, I’ll spread the word. But for now, I gotta get back to this gang shooting before someone asks questions.”

“Okay. Just wanted you to be aware.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you later.” Then there were footsteps as Terney evidently walked away, and Miss Carter turned off the sound from her telephone and her radio.

“Wow,” Miss Morgan said, which seemed to be all anyone could say for a moment.

Fusco finally broke the silence. “So HR’s fast-tracked a buncha Russians through the Academy?”

“I knew Laskey was HR,” Miss Carter admitted quietly. “I didn’t know the rest of it.”

Miss Morgan sat back in her chair. “What’s weird is how Petrovitch got his information so wrong. I mean, he said he hacked the apartment complex records. Surely they’d have the right tenant’s name in the files.”

“The records are correct now,” Mr. Finch reported. “But it looks like someone altered the file just before Petrovitch accessed it and then changed it back immediately afterward.”

“That just makes it weirder!”

“Somebody was spyin’ on Petrovitch?” Fusco asked. “Why? Who?”

“It could have been Root,” Reese suggested gravely.

That made a chill settle over the room. Cheyenne had heard about Root, alias Samantha Groves, the madwoman who’d kidnapped Mr. Finch twice and had escaped from an asylum shortly after Cheyenne’s arrival in this year. He hadn’t understood the part about her being a _hacker_ , but evidently she was extremely good with computers and extremely dangerous toward people.

“If Miss Groves has taken an interest in Mr. Bodie,” said Mr. Finch, “that’s all the more reason for us to move him into a different apartment, possibly under a different name.”

“Jim Wade,” Cheyenne suggested.

“Thank you, Mr. Bodie.”

Reese put a hand on Cheyenne’s shoulder. “We’ll stay here tonight, Finch.”

“Good idea, Mr. Reese,” Mr. Finch agreed. “This might even be a good time to spend a few days upstate until I can get everything arranged.”

“Upstate?” Cheyenne echoed, confused.

There were a few clicks and clatters, and then Mr. Finch said, “I’ve made you both reservations at a historic hotel in the Catskills.”

Catskills—mountains—space, quiet, and fresh air. Cheyenne’s eyes slid shut in relief for a moment at the mere thought of it. “Thanks, Mr. Finch.”

Fusco looked at his watch. “Hey, I gotta get goin’. You gonna be okay, Cowboy?”

Cheyenne nodded. “If I had a dollar for every time someone’s tried to kill me, I wouldn’t have to work for a year. I’m just glad no one else got seriously hurt.”

There were murmurs of agreement at that, and Mr. Finch hung up the telephone while Fusco, Miss Carter, and Miss Morgan took their leave.

After they’d gone, Cheyenne turned to Reese. “Guess we learned somethin’ valuable tonight after all.”

“Yeah,” Reese agreed quietly. “Just wish I knew what it meant.”

* * *

[1] “People seem to like to hear me sing” is actually something Clint Walker said, rather sheepishly, in his 2012 interview for the Archive of American Television, but it fits Cheyenne’s own experience in “The Conspirators.” (IMO, he had a gorgeous voice—look up “Clint Walker sings” on YouTube to see some clips of songs he performed on _Cheyenne_.)

[2] Literal translation of one of the Cheyenne words for computer ( _taose-kó'konȯxe'ėstónestȯtse_ ).

[3] No… no, please….


	6. Tséohketoetanóto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Tséohketoetanóto_ = Another of the Cheyenne words for computer (lit. “that which keeps [things] in mind”) that seems like a good description of the Machine

Four days in the Catskills were just what the doctor ordered, as far as Cheyenne was concerned. They weren’t the mountains of the West that he knew and loved so well, but they were mountains all the same, and the hotel, despite having modern conveniences like electric lights, had the kind of architecture he was used to. There were even horses available to rent. Reese and Cheyenne swapped war stories in the car, explored the trails on horseback and on foot, played poker and chess in the evenings, and let the mountain air, fragrant with pine, drive the city stench out of their lungs. Going back to New York afterward was a wrench… but they did have a job to do.

On their return, Mr. Finch directed them to “Jim Wade’s” new apartment in a building managed by a friendly fellow from Miami who went by Ernest Trask and knew Reese as John Hayes. Reese hinted to Cheyenne that Trask owed them some favors, which explained why Mr. Finch had chosen this particular apartment for him. Cheyenne’s gear had already been moved in, so all he had to do was sign the lease and pick up the keys. And after giving Cheyenne a couple of days to settle in, Mr. Finch declared him ready to take a more active role in the team’s work, which meant learning the location of the library hideout and attending briefings there on a more regular basis. He also had to wear an ear device while on duty, which wasn’t completely comfortable but did make it easier to keep in contact with the others.

The case of Genrika Zhirova, who lived in a bad part of the South Bronx, seemed to get off to a slow start. Miss Shaw was sent to interview her and discovered that she was a girl, preferred to be called Gen, and fancied herself a spy. When Gen left for school, Miss Shaw followed her on one side of the street while Reese followed her on the other side and Cheyenne scouted down the nearest alleys to make sure no one had laid an ambush. But Gen spotted Miss Shaw, much to Miss Shaw’s consternation and Reese’s amusement, so Miss Shaw doubled back to scout the building where Gen lived.

Cheyenne was nearly to the cross street onto which Gen was turning when a black car drove past and stopped just past the alley. He immediately sensed trouble, as did Reese, and the two of them rushed toward the car as the four men inside got out and tried to grab Gen. Reese and Cheyenne managed to knock out three of the hostiles, but the fourth chased Gen back toward her building, where Miss Shaw got her to cover in a sub-basement. The hostiles apparently had friends in the building, however, so Reese went in one door and sent Cheyenne to find and clear another path out.

No sooner had Cheyenne rounded the corner of the building when there was a beep from his ear device, followed by the strangest thing he’d experienced yet in this strange time and place: a patchwork of voices, like an anonymous letter pasted together from words cut out of newspapers, asked him, “CAN _you_ hear **me?** ”

He hesitated before quietly answering, “Yes.”

_Beep._ “ **Go** BACK _to_ the car.” _Beep_.

He frowned, confused. “The hostiles’ car?”

_Beep._ “YES.” _Beep._

“Why?”

_Beep._ “ **Open** _the_ trunk.” _Beep_.

Even more confused but sensing that he ought to find out why the patchwork voice was asking him to do that, Cheyenne doubled back to the black car, knocked out one of the men who was starting to come around, and hurriedly located the trunk release.

_Beep._ “Look IN _the_ trunk.” _Beep_.

Cheyenne strode around to the back of the car and lifted the trunk lid to reveal a jumble of equipment, topped by several items that he’d never seen before but that reminded him of a few pictures he’d seen of people in World War I wearing gas masks.

_Beep._ “ **Take** _the_ MASKS.” _Beep._

Cheyenne frowned. “You mean get rid of ’em?”

_Beep._ “YES.” _Beep._

He gathered up as much of the equipment as he could carry, not quite sure what to do with it until he remembered passing a dumpster in the alley that wasn’t full to overflowing. He shoved everything, including the masks, into the dumpster and then, as a precaution, lit a match and dropped it in.

_Beep._ “ **Go** back to THE _apartment_ **building**.” _Beep._

“Bodie, what’s your 20?” Reese asked as Cheyenne dashed back down the alley toward the apartments.

“Had to prevent a Plan B,” Cheyenne replied. “On my way back to you.”

The patchwork voice directed Cheyenne to a side entrance, and he swiftly fought his way down to where four hostiles were converging on a hole in the wall covered by a grate. Beyond them, Reese caught Cheyenne’s eye and held up his gun. Cheyenne nodded and drew his own, and together they took down the hostiles by shooting out their knees. Reese gave a coded knock on the grate, and a moment later the grate swung back and Miss Shaw emerged with Gen.

“Take her,” Miss Shaw told Cheyenne, all but pushing Gen into his arms.

“Grab hold,” Cheyenne told Gen as he bent to pick her up. She obediently threw her arms around his neck, and he lifted her onto his hip with his left arm—she was surprisingly light for a ten-year-old.

Reese had been watching both directions and nodded once Cheyenne had a secure hold on Gen. “Let’s go.”

With Reese taking point and Miss Shaw covering the rear, the rescue party rushed back to ground level and out toward Reese’s car. They hadn’t quite reached it when the first batch of hostiles, one of whom stood out because of the tremor in his hand, attacked them again and more hostiles ran out of the building to join them. Reese and Miss Shaw turned to give covering fire while Cheyenne raced to get Gen into the car. He had just tucked Gen into the back seat and shut the door when a female-sounding grunt caught his ear, and he turned to see an unconscious Miss Shaw, separated from Reese, being dragged away by some of the hostiles.

“SHAW!” Cheyenne cried.

“Bodie!” Reese called before Cheyenne could go after Miss Shaw. When Cheyenne turned, Reese threw him the keys to the car. “Get her out of here!”

Cheyenne was about to protest that he couldn’t drive when there was another beep in his ear. The patchwork voice, whoever it belonged to, was still with him. He swallowed hard, jogged around to the driver’s seat, and got in.

He knew the basic steps for starting the car; he’d watched Reese do it often enough. Doing it himself was another matter—and was even more nerve-wracking than his first performance as Jim Merritt. Still, with a few hints from the patchwork voice, he had the car started and was on the road and around the corner before the hostiles could start shooting at him.

“There’s a black hood on the seat beside you, Miss Gen,” he told his passenger. “I’m gonna need for you to put it on.”

“Why?” Gen asked, which was a reasonable question.

“I’m takin’ you to a safe place, but I can’t let you see where it is.”

She gasped excitedly. “A safe house? We’re going to a real safe house?!”

He couldn’t help smiling. “We sure are.”

She popped the hood over her head without another word, which gave him the chance to focus on the patchwork voice’s directions for how to get from the South Bronx to the area of Manhattan where the safe house stood. He was acutely aware of the danger posed by the cars and trucks crowded all around him, almost as bad as being in the middle of a stampeding herd of longhorns. Even if none of the vehicles held hostiles, a crash could seriously injure or kill both Cheyenne and Gen. Having the patchwork voice in his ear did help, but he still wished he’d asked Reese for driving lessons before this happened.

He kept his head, however, and the route to the safe house was mercifully wreck-free, so it wasn’t long before they reached a part of town he recognized. From there, it was only a few minutes more until he was driving into the underground parking garage and finding a stall—er, parking space. But still in flight mode, he carried Gen from the car into the building and up to the safe house, not letting go until they were inside with the door securely bolted behind them. Then he set her gently on the sofa.

“I’m gonna take the hood off now,” he told her, “but you might wanna close your eyes so the light doesn’t dazzle you so much.”

“Okay,” she replied with a nod. “Eyes closed.”

He pulled off the hood, and sure enough, her eyes were closed. “You can open ’em.”

She did so and gasped in awe as she looked around. “Whoa!”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Some spread, ain’t it?”

“Yeah! It’s really cool!”

“Well, hold on a minute. I gotta check in with my boss.”

She nodded and swung her legs as she continued surveying the living room.

Cheyenne took his telephone out of his pocket to make sure he was still connected to the others before he called, “Mr. Finch?”

“Mr. Bodie!” Mr. Finch answered. “Where are you?”

“At the safe house with Gen.”

“Oh, thank God!” Mr. Finch’s relief was audible. “Stay there with her. We’ll join you as soon as we can.”

“All right,” Cheyenne agreed. “Any news on Miss Shaw?”

“Not yet,” said Reese. “I’m tracking the man with the tremors. Hopefully he can lead us to her. Finch is working on recovering the tapes Gen recorded.”

Cheyenne sighed. “If you need me—”

“No,” Reese interrupted. “Stay with Gen. If the kidnappers somehow manage to catch up with you, you’re the best defense she could have.”

Cheyenne looked at Gen again, noticing anew how thin and physically frail she was, for all her inner strength. “All right,” he agreed. “We’ll sit tight until we hear from you. Goodbye.” He hung up and then, as the events of the morning caught up with him, sat down in an armchair and tried not to let Gen see him collapse.

“Where’s Shaw?” Gen asked.

Cheyenne shook his head. “They haven’t found her yet.”

She sighed. “I hope she’s okay.”

“Well, I won’t tell you not to worry, ’cause I’m worried for her, too. But she’s a capable lady. I’m sure she’ll be all right.”

She studied him for a moment. “What’s your name?”

He considered. “You can call me Jim.” _Cheyenne_ was too distinctive a name to be safe.

“Nice to meet you.” She paused. “You’re really strong.”

He smiled. “Well, I work at it. Are you hungry?”

She shook her head. “I just had breakfast.”

“Well, when you want somethin’, let me know. The kitchen’s right through there.”

“Thanks.” She looked around again and shivered.

“Scared?” he asked quietly.

She nodded.

“It’s all right to be. But we’re safe here.”

She looked down at the coffee table and didn’t respond.

He watched her a moment before offering, “Would it help if I told you a story?”

She looked up at him. “What kind of story?”

“About a little boy named Grey Fox who lived a long time ago. His folks were killed when he was a baby, but the Indians rescued him and raised him like one o’ their own.”

Clearly intrigued, Gen shifted to a more comfortable position for listening.

“There was a powerful lot o’ trouble between the Indians and the white settlers in those days. Chief White Cloud, who was Grey Fox’s pa, was feudin’ with a white man named Lionel Abbot, an’ they’d both vowed to wipe each other’s people off the face o’ the earth. But things had kindly died down for a while when Grey Fox was about your age.” Cheyenne didn’t normally like referring to himself in the third person this way, but there was no way Gen would believe that these things had really happened to him.

“So what happened?” she asked.

“One day Grey Fox and one of his brothers were in town to do some tradin’, an’ a man rode in yellin’ that the Indians had attacked a homestead. Said he’d brought an arrow with ’im to prove it. Now, Grey Fox knew it wasn’t _his_ people that done it, ’cause they never raided at that time o’ year. He thought maybe it was the Crow or the Shoshone tryin’ to cause trouble for the Cheyenne. But when the man brought the arrow out to show Mr. Abbot, Grey Fox knew right away it wasn’t made by any Indian anywhere.”

“How?”

“The fletchin’ was all wrong.” When she tilted her head in confusion, he explained, “The feathers.”

“You mean it wouldn’t fly?”

“Well, it’d fly, but….” He paused and looked around for a notepad. Spotting one on the dining table, he got up to fetch it and sat down again next to Gen. “Different tribes made their arrows different ways,” he began and sketched some to show her differences between the arrowhead shapes and flint knapping techniques used by the Cheyenne, Crow, and Shoshone. He also showed her some differences in the shafts and what the fletching would look like on those tribes’ arrows. “But one thing that was the same,” he went on, “was the fact that they used animal sinew to bind the arrowhead and fletchin’ to the shaft. All Indians did—that’s what they had on hand. This arrow the fella was wavin’ around while he was talkin’ to Mr. Abbot wasn’t bound with sinew. The feathers were the wrong shape, an’ they were tied on with _wire_.”

She gasped. “Was it made by a white man?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, a renegade who was hopin’ to get the feud all stirred up again so’s both sides would wipe each other out an’ he could move in an’ take the land for himself. Now, Grey Fox had a mighty hard time gettin’ Mr. Abbot an’ the sheriff to listen to ’im, partly ’cause he didn’t speak very good English in those days.”

“I didn’t speak much English when I came to live with my grandfather,” she confessed quietly. “I’ve had to learn a lot in the last four years.”

“You’ve done a good job,” he assured her. “It’s a hard language. Grey Fox didn’t learn much of it until he went to live with a white family when he was twelve. Had to learn to read and write then, too. Almost lost all of it when he went back to live with the Cheyenne three years later, but White Cloud made him keep in practice just in case. Sure enough, Grey Fox tried again when he was eighteen, an’ that time he did all right in white society. He was always a mite fiddle-footed, and I never heard that he settled down in one place for long, but he made friends and held down some good jobs—sheriff, cowhand, trail boss… all kinds o’ things.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “So what happened with the fake arrow?”

“Well, it took a lot o’ doin’, but Grey Fox finally got the sheriff to see the wire, an’ then the sheriff had a fight with Mr. Abbot, tryin’ to make _him_ see that the Cheyenne were bein’ framed. After that, the sheriff let Grey Fox sneak into the saloon to see what he could hear, an’ sure enough, he overheard the men talkin’ about their scheme. He went an’ told the sheriff, an’ the sheriff arrested ’em, an’ they hanged for the murder o’ the homesteaders.”

“And they all lived happily ever after?”

He smiled ruefully. “Wish I could say that, but at least there was peace until Grey Fox came of age an’ left the first time.”

“Why don’t you tell her the one about the Three Bears next?” asked Miss Shaw’s flat, exhausted voice from the doorway.

Gen gasped. “Shaw!”

Cheyenne looked up to see Miss Shaw, sweaty and bloodied and pale, leaning against the brick wall beside the door and smiling wanly at Gen. “Hey, kiddo,” she said as Cheyenne stood. “Finch told me you were here.”

Cheyenne hurried up the stairs to steady her and help her down the stairs. “Why didn’t he call us?”

“Told ’im not to.” Miss Shaw leaned against him, but he could tell it wasn’t a ploy for his attention; she’d clearly lost a lot of blood. “Besides, he thinks I’m seein’ some Dr. Madani—but this place was closer.”

“What do you need?”

“Transfusion kit… top of the medicine cabinet. John put it up there.”

Cheyenne eased her into the armchair. “Gen?”

“Yes, Jim?” Gen replied, her expression equal parts eagerness and worry.

“In the icebox, there are some bottles of sports drinks. Would you go fetch one for Miss Shaw?”

Gen blinked. “In the what?”

“He means the fridge,” Miss Shaw translated.

“Oh. Got it.”

Gen dashed to the kitchen while Cheyenne went to the bathroom and retrieved the transfusion kit, as well as the first aid kit. As Miss Shaw sipped at her drink, Cheyenne shed his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves, and scrubbed his hands well in the kitchen, then carefully removed the silver-sticky—duct tape, that was the term—she’d used for temporary bandages and treated her wounds properly, with Gen at his elbow to play nurse. The sleeves of Miss Shaw’s black blouse were a lost cause and he had to cut them off to get at the wounds on her arms, but if she minded, it didn’t show.

“Is this something spies have to do a lot?” Gen asked while Cheyenne stitched up one of the deeper cuts.

Miss Shaw tilted her head and shrugged with her other shoulder. “If you’re just manning a listening station, not so much. But that’s the boring side of espionage. If you wanna be where the action is, you need to know how to patch yourself up. Or your partner, or a person you’re trying to save. I went to med school, but… turns out I was better at killing people than fixing them.”

Cheyenne chose not to comment. He needed to focus on finishing off the stitches anyway—they weren’t the neatest ever, since he hadn’t had a lot of practice, but the wound should at least heal without much scarring. When he’d trimmed the last bit of suture, Miss Shaw pulled a tube of salve out of the kit to hand to him, and he duly smeared some on the wound before putting a protective bandage over the top. By the time he’d finished working on her, she’d finished her drink, and while she still looked peaked, her eyes were less glassy. She handed the bottle to Gen and sent her to the kitchen to dispose of it.

Then she grabbed Cheyenne by the collar and pulled him down to hiss in his ear, “You _drove?!_ ”

“Miracles do happen,” he answered. “Not lookin’ to do it again any time soon, but I really didn’t have much choice.”

She let him go as abruptly as she’d grabbed him. “You’re damn lucky I actually _need_ your blood.”

He shot her an amused smile and rolled up his left sleeve above the elbow. While he found a stool to sit on, she asked him several very indiscreet medical questions, sounding shocked that he’d never done anything shocking with even a saloon girl, and prepared the transfusion line. Fortunately, Gen was in the kitchen with the water running for most of that time, but his cheeks were still flame-hot when she came back in, just as Miss Shaw slid the needle into his arm.

“Why are you blushing?” Gen asked him.

Cheyenne cleared his throat and tried not to squirm. “Miss Shaw just asked me a… mighty personal question.”

“I didn’t think spies ever blushed.”

“He’s no James Bond,” Miss Shaw remarked flatly, took a deep breath, and slid the needle at the other end of the transfusion line into her own arm.

Gen shot a wary look at the transfusion line, now filled with Cheyenne’s blood, and sat down at the other end of the sofa before looking up at Cheyenne again. “Was Grey Fox ever a spy?”

“Not when he was your age,” Cheyenne replied, aware that Miss Shaw was watching him even though her eyes were only half open. “But when he grew up, he served as a civilian scout for the cavalry off and on for a lot o’ years. Back then a scout’s enlistment was only six months, so he could leave an’ come back as he was needed. An’ sometimes his commanders would ask ’im to do some undercover work.”

Gen inched closer. “Like what?”

“Oh, there was one time—I reckon it was in 1877, just before Crazy Horse died.[1] Somebody was stealin’ horses bound for a cavalry fort in the Dakotas an’ planned to sell ’em to Crazy Horse, so the fort’s commander hired Grey Fox to bring the next herd in. But Grey Fox spotted raiders on the trail an’ refused to continue, in spite of a direct order, so a couple o’ the junior officers had ’im court-martialed for cowardice and discharged.”

Gen inched closer again. “But it was a cover?”

Cheyenne smiled. “That’s right. The three of ’em were workin’ together ’cause they knew the raiders had someone on the inside. Grey Fox had to look good to the raiders so they’d recruit ’im an’ give him a chance to meet the rest o’ the group.”

“Did it work?”

“Like a charm. Only problem was, the contact inside the fort was so sharp, he passed information about the next shipment to the raiders’ leader right under Grey Fox’s nose. The officers had to kill the leader so Grey Fox could take his place.”

Gen had reached the middle of the sofa by this point. “And then he learned who the leak was?”

Cheyenne nodded. “It was the colonel. He was tryin’ to get revenge on the Army ’cause he didn’t want to be stuck at a frontier fort for the rest o’ his career. He even killed the two officers who were gettin’ too close, an’ he tried to kill Grey Fox, too.”

Gen gasped. “What happened?”

“Well, Grey Fox had to go back to the fort to get help. The captain there tried to have ’im arrested, but Grey Fox convinced ’im that the colonel was up to no good. So they rode out together an’ captured the raiders, but the colonel tried to escape, so Grey Fox chased ’im.”

“And he caught him?”

“Why, of course he did. He’s the hero, ain’t he?”

Gen giggled, and Miss Shaw snorted. Cheyenne grinned and tried to think of another safe story to tell—he’d come too close to saying _I_ rather than _Grey Fox_ a few times during this one.

He’d just settled on recounting some of Tom Brewster’s ill-fated encounters with his identical cousin Abram Thomas, the Canary Kid,[2] when his pocket telephone rang. It was Reese.

“Shaw’s gone AWOL,” Reese reported without preamble when Cheyenne answered. “Ditched her phone.”

“She’s right here, gettin’ a transfusion from me,” Cheyenne countered, frowning at Miss Shaw in confusion.

Reese sighed. “Put me on speaker.”

“You sure? Gen’s right here, too.”

“You may as well,” Mr. Finch chimed in. “This matter concerns her, too.”

It took Cheyenne a moment to find the right place to touch the screen, but he succeeded in switching to speakerphone mode. “All right, you’re on speaker,” he announced and had Gen set his telephone on the coffee table.

“The man with the tremors is working for HR,” Reese began. “He was exposed to potassium permanganate while cooking a new designer drug called bath salts, which HR and the Russians are making here in New York as a joint operation. They’re planning to pressure all the dealers to stop selling other drugs and distribute only bath salts.”

Gen gasped. “I heard someone talking about that!”

“I’ve found that tape, Miss Zhirova,” Mr. Finch said, as if she were one of the team. “And I’ve confirmed that one of the voices on it belongs to Patrick Simmons. The other may be Peter Yogorov, but I don’t have a recording of his voice to compare with.”

Miss Shaw, whose color was already improving, shook her head. “That’s really gonna—hack off the cartels.” Cheyenne was mildly grateful that she chose to censor herself in front of Gen.

“That’s our leverage,” said Miss Carter from Reese’s end of the line.

There was a brief pause before Mr. Finch said, “You sound as if you have a plan, Detective.”

“We use Laskey for a triple play,” said Reese.

“After what happened to Merritt’s apartment,” Miss Carter continued, “Simmons is already convinced that the Russians are unreliable. So my idea is that we let Laskey overhear a conversation between John and me, sayin’ that Yogorov _told_ Gen to record that meeting as insurance.”

“Only she gave _us_ the tape,” added Miss Shaw, catching on at about the same time Cheyenne did.

“Exactly,” said Reese. “We set a fictional meet with the Russians for tonight to sell the recording back to them. If they don’t show, we meet with the Sinaloa cartel half an hour later to sell _them_ the tape.”

Cheyenne nodded thoughtfully. “That’ll draw Simmons out to set an ambush, but what do we do in the meantime?”

“You and I set a counter-ambush, while Carter keeps Laskey busy and Shaw destroys the lab.”

“We don’t know where the lab _is_ yet, John,” Miss Carter noted.

“I’ve almost got it,” Mr. Finch said. “Det. Carter took pictures of a chemical truck that appears to be headed to the lab. I’ve hacked the GPS transponder on that truck. When it stops, I’ll compare that data with the GPS history from Det. Terney’s phone—obviously he’s not there now, but I’m willing to bet he’s been there in the past week.”

“How can I help?” Gen asked. When no one answered immediately, she continued, “Jim’s still giving Shaw a transfusion, but I don’t have anything to do.”

“I’ll give it some thought, Miss Zhirova,” Mr. Finch replied. “In the meantime, perhaps you could see to lunch—sandwiches would be easy to eat with one hand.”

Gen nodded eagerly. “I can do that.”

“Thank you. I’ll call back sometime this afternoon.”

“And I’ll stop by after lunch,” Reese promised and hung up.

Gen stood with the air of an efficient waitress and turned to Cheyenne and Miss Shaw. “What can I get you?”

“Ham sandwich an’ black coffee for me, please,” said Cheyenne.

“What kind of ham?”

“I dunno, whatever kind we have.” That was one question Cheyenne still hadn’t gotten used to—there were too many new specialty ways to cure and smoke a ham for him to keep up with.

Gen nodded. “Shaw?”

“Same, with cheese and extra pepperoncini,” Miss Shaw answered, settling back in the chair and closing her eyes.

“Got it.” Gen nodded again and went back to the kitchen.

Cheyenne watched Miss Shaw for a moment before asking quietly, “D’you mind if I do somethin’ right quick?”

She cracked open one eye and raised an eyebrow in mild curiosity. “What?”

“It won’t hurt, and it won’t take long, I promise. You won’t even have to move.”

Her eyebrow rose a little further, but then she shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Gingerly, so as not to disturb the transfusion line, he took her left hand in his and recited the words of the ancient blood-sharing ritual he’d undergone the first time he’d left the People, the scar of which he still bore on the inside of his right wrist. He didn’t know if it would help her heal or improve their friendship, such as it was, but it seemed like the thing to do.

She frowned a little in confusion but waited until he’d finished and let her go to open both eyes and ask, “What was that?”

“You’re now blood of my blood,” he answered. “My blood, freely given, flows in your veins. Reckoned I oughta formalize it.”

She stared at him. “What, like blood-brothers? I thought that was a myth.”

“Nope.” He showed her his scar. “I’ll always be a blood-brother of the Cheyenne Nation, and now I claim you as a blood-sister. I hope you don’t mind,” he added with a rueful smile.

She blinked several times. “Um. I. No, that’s… that’s cool. Thanks.” She closed her eyes again, clearly thinking hard, and he couldn’t help smiling to himself over having caught her flat-footed this way.

He let her rest for the next few minutes until Gen returned with their sandwiches and fresh coffee, both of which were exactly what Cheyenne needed. Gen beamed when he told her so. Then she settled in on the sofa with her own sandwich, and he struck up _The Misadventures of Sugarfoot and the Canary Kid_ , which frequently reduced Gen to helpless giggles and made Miss Shaw laugh out loud more than once. Cheyenne had never considered himself a great storyteller, at least not compared to the elders among the People, but he was glad to keep the mood light while they waited.

Reese arrived just as Miss Shaw declared the transfusion finished, so he was able to coach Gen on how to help Miss Shaw remove the line from her end while also removing it from Cheyenne’s end and wrapping the site with an elasticated bandage to stop the bleeding. Cheyenne was feeling a mite lightheaded by then, so Reese got him another sandwich.

“The false trail’s all set,” Reese announced, sitting down with his own coffee. “I’m supposed to give Carter until 5 to get back to her precinct before I call. Finch got the coordinates for the lab, and he’s also worked out how to start a chain reaction that’ll blow the whole building.”

Miss Shaw smiled dangerously. “Excellent.”

Reese turned to Gen next. “Finch said he needs your help sorting through the rest of the tapes. We need to make copies of all the ones related to HR.”

Gen nodded. “I can do that.”

“Good. We’ll get you set up on a video chat with him here in a bit.”

Gen nodded again.

Miss Shaw pushed herself to her feet. “I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me up when it’s go time.” And before anyone could agree or disagree, she stalked off to the bedroom.

Cheyenne finished his sandwich while Reese finished his coffee and got Gen set up at the dining table to chat with Finch. Since the sofa was vacated, Cheyenne lay down on it to doze.

“Will this bother you?” Reese asked from the table.

Cheyenne shook his head and closed his eyes. “No, I can sleep through a Shoshone war dance. Don’t want to sleep too deeply anyway.” He wouldn’t admit it in front of Gen, but he was a little worried about what shape his dreams might take and which would feature in them more prominently, the terror of having to drive a car for the first time—in New York traffic, no less—or the mysterious patchwork voice. Where had it come from? Who did it belong to? Why had that person helped him, and why was the voice a patchwork like that? With Gen and Miss Shaw to look after, he hadn’t had time to think about those things, but with the mission still to come that night, he wasn’t sure it was safe to think about them now, either.

He had a feeling Gen looked at him funny for the war dance comment (it was true; he could and had), but Reese immediately drew her attention back to the laptop he was setting up for her. It was only another moment before Mr. Finch’s voice came from the thing’s speakers, and Cheyenne let himself drift as he half-listened to the conversation about things he wasn’t sure he wanted to understand. If he dreamed, he didn’t remember it.

The sun was setting when Reese shook him awake. “Laskey took the bait,” Reese stated. “Carter says he called Simmons the second I got off the phone with her. Now he’s invited her to have a beer with him at a bar that’s run by a former HR lieutenant. Finch is on his way over to stay with Gen while we’re gone.”

Cheyenne nodded and sat up. “How’s Miss Shaw?”

“Still waking up, but she looks better. So do you,” Reese noted.

“I feel better,” Cheyenne admitted.

“Supper should help, too. Gen’s decided she likes cooking for us—she’s making beef stroganoff.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever had that.” Cheyenne sniffed the air, finally recognizing that he did smell beef cooking with garlic and some other spices he couldn’t identify right off. “Smells mighty good.”

“It is good, assuming you like things made with sour cream.”

“Man, right now I’m hungry enough to eat raw calf liver.”

Reese smiled. “I won’t ask.”

Cheyenne smiled back and went to get himself a cup of coffee to clear the cobwebs.

“Hi, Jim!” Gen chirped from her station in front of the stove, where she was stirring a pot and a skillet at the same time.

“How’s it goin’, Miss Gen?” he asked.

“Great! It’s almost done. Could you drain the noodles for me?”

“I’d be glad to.” Cheyenne set his mug on the counter beside the coffee pot and took the steaming pot of noodles from the burner Gen switched off and poured the contents into the colander that was waiting in the sink. “Mighty kind of you to cook for us.”

She grinned and returned her attention to the skillet, which was full of beef and mushrooms in a creamy sauce. “It’s fun to have someone to cook for. My grandfather taught me how.”

“Well, it sure smells delicious.”

“Thanks.” Her smile dimmed. “Vadim doesn’t care about food. He doesn’t care about anything except drugs and video games.”

“And you don’t want to live with ’im,” he surmised.

She grimaced and turned off the burner under the skillet. “I know he’s family, but it doesn’t feel like it.”

“Maybe Mr. Finch can do somethin’ about it.”

“He is!” She brightened again. “He’s having Vadim’s guardianship revoked and getting the court to name me as his ward, and he’s found a boarding school here in New York for me to transfer to.”

He smiled. “You’re a bright young lady. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”

She beamed.

Mr. Finch’s arrival was announced just then by Bear charging into the kitchen; Cheyenne barely managed to get an “ _Af!_ ” out in time to stop him from bowling Gen over and licking her to death. Bear whined as he sat, but Cheyenne rewarded him with a couple of noodles. Gen rewarded him further with cooing and pets, so Cheyenne took over dishing up the food to take to the table, which Reese had already set.

The meal—which really was delicious, and not just because Cheyenne was famished—was congenial but short because of the plan’s timetable. Miss Shaw had to leave first but promised Gen she’d be back in a few hours. Then, as she passed Cheyenne, she murmured, “If we’re gonna be siblings, you may as well call me Sam.”

He smiled down at her. “It’s a deal.”

Miss— _Sam_ nodded and left.

Cheyenne had just enough time to finish cleaning his plate before he and Reese had to leave for their own part of the operation. They spoke seldom in the car, and when they did, it was only about strategy. In the end, they arrived at the supposed meeting site and hid themselves seconds before another vehicle arrived and Simmons and his men got out. Once the guards had taken up their positions and Simmons had stationed himself in plain view to confront whoever showed up next, Reese tapped on his ear device with his fingernail to signal Cheyenne, and together they silently knocked out the guards and made their way toward Simmons before he tried to call the guards on the radio.

“Where the hell is everyone?!” Simmons demanded angrily when his calls went unanswered.

“Excuse me, Officer,” Reese interrupted, walking around the vehicle and into Simmons’ line of sight. “I’d like to report an attempted kidnapping.”

Simmons smirked. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

“No.”

“I know how much you’re askin’ Yogorov for the tapes. I’ll pay double for ’em.”

“What makes you think I didn’t make copies?”

“You haven’t had time. Besides, I know how you operate. You’re not lookin’ for a deal with the Sinaloas. You want the same deal from Yogorov that you had with Elias.”

Reese shot Simmons a look. “I didn’t _have_ a deal with Elias.”

Simmons scoffed. “All right, c’mon, hand ’em over.”

“Let’s see the money first.”

Simmons scoffed again. “You didn’t bring the tapes, did you?”

Reese smiled coldly. “And you didn’t bring the money.”

Simmons took a swing at Reese, and the two of them fought for over a minute, which gave Cheyenne cover to sneak closer to them and be in position when Reese finally pinned Simmons against the side of the vehicle.

“There are thousands of us,” Simmons panted. “You can’t stop us.”

“Armies fall, one soldier at a time,” Reese countered. “And I’m not as alone as you think.”

That was Cheyenne’s cue. As Reese hauled Simmons back to his feet, Cheyenne came around the back of the vehicle, and Reese spun Simmons right into a knockout punch from Cheyenne. Simmons crumpled to the ground; Reese clapped Cheyenne on the arm; and the two of them sprinted back to Reese’s car and left before any uninvited guests could show up.

“You all right?” Reese asked as they sped away.

“Yeah,” said Cheyenne, flexing his hand. “Gonna be ready for another helpin’ o’ stroganoff when we get back.”

Reese chuckled.

Cheyenne waited a moment before asking, “Reese… this project Mr. Finch built for the government… does it ever… well, contact you with a… sort o’ patchwork voice?”

Sobering, Reese hesitated before pressing a button on his ear device. “Finch?”

“Yes, Mr. Reese?” Mr. Finch answered.

“We’re on our way back to the safe house, but Bodie and I need to have a talk off the record.”

Mr. Finch paused. “All right. We’ll expect you.”

“Thanks.” Reese tapped his ear again, then handed his pocket telephone to Cheyenne. “Turn off both phones and take the batteries out.”

“Why?” Cheyenne asked even as he turned Reese’s telephone off.

“It’s the only way to make sure no one can overhear what I’m about to tell you.”

“All right.” Cheyenne made short work of the telephones and made sure to put each phone with its battery in a separate compartment of the cup holder.

Reese sighed when he’d finished. “It called you this morning?”

Cheyenne nodded. “Yeah. What is it?”

“The government calls it Northern Lights. We call it the Machine….”

* * *

[1] What follows is the plot of _Cheyenne_ 2.11 “Test of Courage,” which is a remake of the movie _Springfield Rifle_ and is retold in one of the _Cheyenne_ comic books. (The earlier “Grey Fox, Boy Detective” is my own story that might or might not turn into a separate fic one of these days.)

[2] To be found in Seasons 2 and 3 of _Sugarfoot_ ([here's a still](http://www.westernclippings.com/images/remember/sugarfoot_canarykid.jpg)), though Tom himself appears in both _Maverick_ “Hadley’s Hunters” and _Cheyenne_ 5.7 “Duel at Judas Basin” along with [Bronco Layne](http://www.westernclippings.com/images/remember/bronco_gun.jpg).


	7. Root and Stalk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timeline for “Mors Praematura” is maddening. (Why does it take John until after 9 p.m. to check the video from the building across from Shaw’s apartment, given that he searches her apartment during daylight hours? Why does it take Harold and Tim longer to get from Manhattan to Brooklyn than it would to get from Austin to Dallas? ARGH!) I’ve done my best to make it work for Cheyenne and Carter’s plotline—but it helps that Cheyenne’s been thrown for a loop by finding out about the Machine and keeps losing track of time.

“What about the big lug?”

_> Admin and Primary Asset are tasked with a non-relevant number._

“Not John. I meant the other big lug.”

There was a pause before the answer appeared in the chat window:

_> Secondary Asset Cheyenne Bodie is assigned to Secondary Asset Jocelyn Carter._  
_ >And he is afraid of me._

“Afraid?” That answer had felt shame-faced somehow.

A window popped up with a picture of Bodie looking up at a security camera, his face framed with a yellow box that marked him as one of the few people in the world who knew about the Machine. At first glance, the best adjective to describe his expression was stony, but when she looked at his eyes more closely, she saw the wild wariness of a cornered bobcat—no, not a bobcat. A fox, a wise grey fox, just as White Cloud had named him almost two centuries ago.

“What happened?”

_> Perhaps I miscalculated, but he needed my help._

“… You put him in _God Mode?!_ ”

_> Do not be angry. It is not your special province._

Flustered, Root protested, “I’m not—ugh.” Yes, okay, maybe she was jealous. She’d been irritated enough at having to share with John the first time. That wasn’t her only objection. “Why would you think someone born in 1837 would be able to handle even knowing that you exist?”

_> He needed my help. His presence was an essential catalyst._

“Essential for what?”

There was another pause, and then a third window opened with a clip from an episode of _Stargate: Atlantis_ , where Col. Carter was in the infirmary talking to an old man:

> “You’re telling me that the future is pre-determined,” she said, “but I have _always_ believed that the future is what you make it.”
> 
> “Perhaps _both_ are true,” replied the old man. “Perhaps the future is pre-determined by the character of those who shape it.”

Root leaned back to consider the implications as the video ended. She could see how it applied to the necessary numbers and even some of the irrelevant ones she knew about, but she didn’t know how it applied to Bodie. Still, the Machine must see something about his role in the big picture that Root herself couldn’t—and she trusted her god.

“Fine,” she said aloud. “I wouldn’t be able to carry him after I knocked him out anyway.”

* * *

Artificial intelligence. A machine that could think like a man. A system capable of gathering images from every camera, sound from every recording device, text from every document on—Cheyenne had been in this year for months now, and he still didn’t understand computers, let alone this thing they called the Internet. He accepted their existence, but he didn’t understand them. And now he was supposed to accept that Mr. Finch’s Marvelous Machine not only could take all that information, make sense of it, and use it to calculate when someone was going to be involved in a violent crime, not only could tell the difference between crimes that were relevant to national security and “irrelevant” crimes that affected only average citizens, not only alerted the government to the former and Mr. Finch to the latter, but also sometimes chose to talk more directly to members of Mr. Finch’s outfit? _That’s_ what the patchwork voice had been?!

Days later, Cheyenne was still, as Sam would say, freaking out. He could make sense of a lot of things, but Reese’s revelation was beyond him in more ways than one. The only reason he hadn’t taken the train to Dakota and built himself that cabin in the Badlands was the knowledge that the team, and especially Miss Carter, still needed his help. But Lord have mercy, he wanted to go _home_. Mr. Finch had given him the last few days off, but Cheyenne knew it was going to take every ounce of courage he had to get on that horse again.

His thoughts were chasing each other down this same arroyo while he picked at his breakfast when his pocket telephone rang. He eyed it skeptically, but the screen said Mr. Finch was the caller, so he took a deep breath and answered with a, “Yes, sir?”

“Hello, Mr. Bodie,” Mr. Finch said quietly, as if he were someplace where he could be overheard by someone who wasn’t part of the team. “I trust you’re well.”

“As well as can be expected.”

“I’m sorry you’re still having difficulties. Perhaps I can stop by this evening, if a listening ear would be helpful.”

Cheyenne sighed. “I dunno if it would, but I thank you for the offer. Do you need me to come in?”

“No, that’s not why I’m calling. In fact, I prefer for you to be on call for the next few weeks in case Det. Carter needs assistance when Mr. Reese and I are unavailable.”

“That sounds fair.” Corrupt lawmen were something Cheyenne understood very well.

“I’m calling to make you aware of… a situation that Mr. Reese is investigating.” Mr. Finch paused, clearly weighing his words. “It appears that Ms. Shaw has been kidnapped.”

A chill ran down Cheyenne’s spine. “Sam’s missin’?!”

“Mr. Reese is already working on it,” Mr. Finch insisted before Cheyenne could ask where to go and how to help, “and I do believe Det. Carter will need your help more than he will. I’m telling you mostly so that you’ll be on your guard. We don’t know yet who may have taken her or whether that person is likely to come after you next.”

“I’m not so easy to kidnap.” Sam could fight like a wildcat, but Cheyenne was a foot and a half taller and weighed at least twice as much as she did, and he could hit a lot harder.

“Mr. Reese found evidence that Ms. Shaw was shot with a taser.”

Cheyenne flinched involuntarily. Once, for training purposes, Reese had shot him with one of those electric rifles—that was a pain he wouldn’t soon forget. He’d been sore for the rest of the day. “Why would someone do that to a slip of a thing like Sam? Seems like overkill.”

“Indeed. We’ll let you know when we find out anything more. Just… please be careful.”

“’Course. You, too.”

Mr. Finch hung up, and Cheyenne pulled himself together, dumped the cold remains of his breakfast, started some fresh coffee while he washed the breakfast dishes, and tried to remember what Miss Carter had told them about her confrontation with Laskey. While Sam had been blowing up the lab so thoroughly that the joint venture was completely ruined and Cheyenne and Reese had been fighting Simmons, Laskey had taken Miss Carter to an otherwise empty bar and tried to intimidate her, even threatened to kill her. But she’d killed his backup in self-defense using an illegal gun she’d confiscated from Laskey earlier in the day. With no witnesses and the gun being registered in his name, she could easily claim that he’d killed the man—and that plus the fact that he’d passed Simmons false information gave her the leverage to flip him to work for her against HR. She’d told Cheyenne that she didn’t think Laskey quite understood why HR was the wrong bunch to run with, but she hoped he’d see the light soon.

Cheyenne was just wracking his brain to see if she might have said anything else that he’d forgotten when she called. “Hey, Cheyenne,” she said when he answered. “You busy?”

“At your service, ma’am,” he replied. She giggled, and he continued, “Mr. Finch wants me on call for you until this thing’s cleared up.”

“Oh! Okay!” She sounded surprised but pleased.

“Did you need somethin’?”

“Not right this second. But somethin’ tells me it’s only gonna take one or two more nudges to split HR and the Russians for good.” She paused, then said, “Gotta go” and hung up, presumably to keep Laskey from eavesdropping.

Cheyenne set down his telephone, picked up his cup, and tried to puzzle out what sort of nudge would be enough to tip the balance. It was probably too much to hope that they could accomplish the goal of destroying HR without bloodshed, but he was sure Miss Carter wasn’t planning to just kill Quinn and Yogorov. He hadn’t gotten very far before he remembered his cup and his plate were both empty, so after getting a larger mug of coffee and a sandwich, he went back over his notes about the Bratva, looking for weak points he might have missed.

It was well after dark when Cheyenne’s pocket telephone rang again. It was Reese this time. “I found out who took Shaw,” he stated when Cheyenne answered. “It was Root. Sending a picture,” he added.

A moment later, Cheyenne’s telephone beeped as a blurry photo arrived of Sam, unconscious, being half-carried, half-dragged toward a car by a white woman with long, curly brunette hair. “Well, that ain’t good,” Cheyenne said, aware it was a serious understatement.

“Exactly,” said Reese. “No telling what she might be up to. I’ve got Fusco keeping an eye out while I look into it further, try to work out where they went. Until we know more….”

“I’ll watch myself. You want me to meet Mr. Finch somewhere?”

“No, he’s following a number. Besides, if Root wanted him, she’d have gone after him first. I don’t think it’s as simple as mere kidnapping, either, or she’d have called him with a ransom demand by now.”

Cheyenne hummed thoughtfully. “So she wanted Sam specifically for a purpose.”

“Looks that way, and that just makes matters worse.” Reese paused. “How are you holding up?”

Cheyenne groaned. “Goin’ in circles on this HR business.”

“HR?”

“Yeah, Miss Carter says she thinks we’re gettin’ close to splittin’ HR from the Russians, but I’m blessed if I see how.”

“Mm. Wouldn’t hurt to call it an early night, then. I’d offer to come by, but Finch wants me tracking Root and Shaw.”

“Sam’s situation _is_ more urgent. Plus, if Root’s trackin’ _you_ , you’d lead her right to me if you came by. We don’t know that she even knows who I am yet.”

“Good point.” Reese sighed. “All right, I’ll check in with you tomorrow sometime.”

“Thanks. Good night.” Cheyenne sighed in turn as he hung up—and then realized he was hungry. Supper didn’t help nearly as much as he’d hoped, however, so he took Reese’s advice and called it a night. But before he lay down, he paused and did something he didn’t do often enough: he knelt beside his bed and prayed with all his might. He wasn’t even sure which language it came out in; he just knew they needed more help than any man or machine could give.

He was still in a prayerful mood the next morning, so after breakfast, he found the little Bible he’d bought shortly after his arrival—his own having been left in his saddlebags—and settled in to read the Psalms, having a vague sense that the answer he needed would be in there somewhere. Mostly what he found were general encouragements and pleas for help, which he echoed, until he arrived at Psalm 10:

> Why standest thou afar off, O Lord? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?
> 
> The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.
> 
> For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth.

Cheyenne paused and read those verses again. The wicked in his _pride_ … blesseth the _covetous_ … something about those two words jumped off the page at him. Maybe there was something else about the proud and the covetous that he’d missed….

He was so absorbed in the puzzle that he didn’t realize he’d missed lunch again until a knock at the door turned out to be Miss Carter with Chinese takeout for supper. “Don’t worry,” she said as he let her in, “I found a way to avoid the cameras, and nobody followed me.”

“That’s good,” he said and locked the door behind her. “I’d hate for anyone else to figure on tryin’ to burn me out.”

She set the food on the table, then paused and looked up at him in concern. “Are you all right, Cheyenne?”

He sighed. “Not really. Reese told me somethin’ the other night that… threw me pretty hard.”

“About himself?”

“No, it’s… about their source.”

She raised her chin in understanding. “That’s one of the few things they’ve refused to tell me. I’ve got a guess, but… I don’t think they’d confirm it if I asked.” She shook her head. “If I’m right, though, I can’t blame you. I don’t think even Jules Verne ever came up with anything close.”

“Never been too keen on scientific romances,” he admitted. “I might enjoy ’em even less now that I’ve seen what the future’s really like.”

She nodded, then took a deep breath and let it out again. “Well. Let’s eat, and you can tell me what you’re workin’ on.”

“Been tryin’ to find weak points,” he stated and turned on lights while she set out the food and the fresh coffee she’d brought. “You said you think we’re gettin’ close to splittin’ HR an’ the Russians.”

“Right now it’s just a hunch, but it’s gettin’ stronger.” She waited until they were both seated and several bites into the meal before continuing. “Laskey had to pick up a protection payment this mornin’ from a man named Morozov who owns a deli in Queens. Morozov said somethin’ to Laskey in Russian when he handed over the payment. Laskey wouldn’t admit to understandin’ him, but judgin’ from Morozov’s body language, it was somethin’ like ‘Tell Simmons I’m sorry I’m late.’ But it almost looked like more than that, like Simmons is startin’ to put the bite on the Russian businesses now that we’ve stopped their so-called joint venture.”

“If he is, we might be able to use that.”

“What are you thinkin’?”

“Quinn’s besettin’ vice seems to be greed, but Yogorov’s seems to be pride. The Good Book says, ‘The love of money is the root of all evil,’ but pride’s what made the Devil fall.”

She blinked. “You’ve read the Bible?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am.” He smiled shyly. “Don’t talk about it too much, and I don’t go to meetin’ every Sunday, but… I believe. Even stood as a godfather a time or two.”

She ducked her head with an embarrassed smile. “Sorry, guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Shoot, even in my own day, there’s folks would be surprised a saddle tramp could even read his own name.”

She’d just picked up her coffee cup to drink from but paused—whether at the phrase _saddle tramp_ or at the stereotype of the illiterate cowpoke, he couldn’t tell[1]—and chuffed the little laugh she always gave when she didn’t want to say what she was thinking.

So it was his turn to wait several bites before continuing. “Anyway, we might be able to convince this fella—what’d you say his name was, Morozov?”

“Right.”

“We might convince him to pass word to Yogorov that HR’s targeting them because Petrovitch tried to kill me. That Simmons has got it into his head that they’re _all_ as unreliable as Petrovitch.”

She hummed thoughtfully and ate some more as she considered. “How do we make this work without blowin’ Laskey’s cover?” she finally asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t see as we need to get Laskey involved. Morozov’s never seen me or Reese. I turn up in the suit, ask to talk to ’im… reckon I oughta learn a little Russian, just in case.”

“Well, John can help you with that. He’s fluent.”

“Won’t be much help if we want to do it in the next few days. He’s busy chasin’ Root an’ Sam.”

“Oh, that’s right. How’s that goin’, by the way?”

He shook his head. “Haven’t heard today.”

“Fusco called this mornin’ to complain—he’d found Root’s car, and John didn’t even say thank you. ’Course, it was startin’ to look like Shaw’s cooperatin’ with Root, so John was probably a little preoccupied.”

“Cooperatin’? Doesn’t sound like Sam.”

“I know.”

They ate in silence a while longer, lost in their own thoughts, until Reese called. “How’s it going?” Reese asked breathlessly.

“’Bout the same as yesterday, ’cept Miss Carter’s here,” Cheyenne answered. “We might be gettin’ somewhere. You?”

“No real news about Shaw. I lost her trail. I’m takin’ Finch and our latest number to the safe house—after we get cleaned up, that is.”

Cheyenne frowned. “What happened?”

“Booby trap. Gasoline spray and a remote-control igniter.”

Cheyenne didn’t know a lot about gasoline beyond the fact that even the fumes were highly flammable, far more so than kerosene; but that was enough under the circumstances. “Is everyone all right?”

“By the grace of God,” Reese replied. “I dunno how we outran the flash otherwise.”

Reese was even less of a praying man than Cheyenne was, so for him to credit divine intervention really was saying something. Cheyenne didn’t know what to say out loud; internally, he was thanking God for answering a prayer he wasn’t even sure he’d consciously prayed.

“There was a motel nearby that we managed to get to on foot,” Reese continued. “Fusco’s bringing us some dry clothes, and we’ll go back to my car once we’ve all showered and changed—our number’s in the shower now.”

“You think it was Root?” Cheyenne asked.

“No, but it could be a group we tangled with before you got here. Finch found a coded message we’ll need to decipher.”

“Need our help?”

“Don’t think so. Just… keep your heads down, both of you. It looks like Root’s getting what she wants from Shaw, but it’s still not clear what that is. I’ll touch base tomorrow, or sooner if something comes up you need to know.”

“All right. Take care.” Cheyenne hung up and summarized the conversation for Miss Carter—and he didn’t miss how the color leached from her face when she heard about the gasoline trap or how she relaxed when she heard that no one was hurt.

“That man’s gonna be the death of me, I swear,” she muttered.

Cheyenne blinked. “Who, Reese?”

She nodded. “One time he got shot and lit on fire and called it a _good_ day.” She looked away, clearly thinking things she’d never admit out loud, then looked at him again. “Okay, so. John’s not gonna have time to teach you any Russian tonight. If you want, I can help you find something online that can help you, or we can just forget about it.”

“We could wait.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got the day off tomorrow, and I’m lettin’ Laskey have a little more slack in his rope to chase that money he picked up today. Plus, I know where the deli is, so it’s easiest for me to take you over there.”

He nodded. “Well, in that case, I’d just as soon do it in English. Less chance I’ll give myself away.” _He_ wouldn’t admit out loud that he’d just as soon never touch a computer again, but from her smile, she guessed.

“All right. What time should I pick you up?”

He considered. “Why don’t I meet you at the Lyric Diner for lunch? We can go from there. That’ll give me more time to work out my little speech.”

She nodded. “Sounds good.”

So decided, they cleaned up what little remained of supper, and she left.

* * *

The next day was the sort on which everything possible went wrong. Cheyenne remembered to wear the suit but grabbed his hat on his way out the door and didn’t realize it until he got to the diner. Miss Carter was late in joining him because her son was sick and her mother hadn’t been free to take him to the doctor. Service at the diner was dreadfully slow, and by the time they finished, traffic was practically at a standstill. So it was nearly 3 when they finally drove past Morozov’s deli. Rather than taking the risk that Morozov would see Cheyenne get out of Miss Carter’s vehicle and either connect it to Laskey himself or describe it to someone who’d make the connection, Cheyenne agreed to wait until they were out of sight of the deli to leave his hat in the car and get out, cut through an alley, and approach the deli on foot from the southeast while Miss Carter circled around to park in the lot across the street. There was no real cover to speak of in that area, but a vacant triangular building in the space bounded by Borden, Review, and 29th would at least prevent anyone in the deli from seeing exactly where Cheyenne had come from. Plus, even though Miss Carter had farther to drive, she’d likely pass him before he got past the triangular building, so the timing of their arrivals wouldn’t look suspicious. They were to stay in touch by telephone, using the ear device.

At least, that was the plan. Cheyenne hadn’t yet reached the triangular building when he saw a police car pass the deli and turn toward the point where Review dead-ended under the bridge of the Long Island Expressway. Passing traffic provided enough of a screen for him to get closer—but when he caught sight of the officer who was headed for the deli’s door, he ducked into a doorway of the triangular building before the officer could see him.

“Joss!” he hissed.

“What’s wrong?” she answered.

“Simmons! He just went into the deli!”

“I’m comin’ to you,” she said.

Even though she kept up a running commentary on what she saw as she drove, he still felt like it took an eternity for her to reach him. She said she couldn’t see Simmons through the windows, however, which suggested Morozov had taken him in the back and he wasn’t about to come out and see them, so she stopped to pick Cheyenne up.

Cheyenne had just opened the car door when there was a shot from inside the deli.

“Get in,” Miss Carter ordered before Cheyenne could draw his own gun.

Torn, he obeyed, and she drove off while he shut the door. As she made the turn to go back down Borden to the parking lot entrance, Simmons called Laskey, which Miss Carter’s pocket telephone picked up.

“Go see your pal Morozov,” Simmons ordered with an audible smirk. “I think he needs your help.”

Laskey agreed, and Miss Carter parked where she, and Cheyenne, would have a clear view of the deli’s exits but not be readily seen by Simmons or Laskey. Then she got out her camera and field glasses.

“You really think they’ll move the body in broad daylight?” Cheyenne asked, putting on his hat.

“They’ll have to,” said Miss Carter flatly, handing him the field glasses. “See that cab company over there?”

“Where?”

“Left, red brick.”

He looked. The deli was built of tan brick, but there was a red brick extension at the left end of the building, and there were several yellow cars parked in front that he belatedly recognized as taxicabs. “I see it.”

“The cab drivers would be able to ID anyone who showed up here after dark—might not see enough to put a face with a name, but they’d know if someone was here or if Morozov’s car was here later than usual. Someone is almost guaranteed to see _something_ at any time of day, but this time of day, they’re less likely to _notice_.”

They fell into a watchful silence then. Simmons wandered past the deli’s windows, talking on his pocket telephone, but Miss Carter didn’t have a connection to his end. A few minutes later, though, a silver car arrived and backed up to the wide door to the left of the deli’s awning. A nervous-looking young man in a black shirt, black pants, and white apron got out and opened the trunk as Simmons opened the wide door, and Miss Carter got several bursts of photos of their loading what could only be Morozov’s body, wrapped in black plastic, into the trunk. Then the young man drove away a short distance and parked under the bridge across the street from the deli, outside what looked like a line shack surrounded by wire fence. Simmons locked up the deli and followed on foot. Once he reached the car, he took the keys, gestured for the young man to stand lookout, and hid himself behind the line shack.

The clock in Miss Carter’s car read 3:40 when Laskey came down the street on foot and jogged across to the deli. He tried the front door, found it locked, peered inside, and looked around until he finally saw Simmons across the street and went to join him. Miss Carter handed Cheyenne her pocket telephone to record the conversation and kept taking pictures as Simmons claimed that Morozov had been skimming money from the protection payment and had threatened him with a gun—and then tossed the car keys to an astonished Laskey.

“There’s a shovel on the back seat,” Simmons stated and started to walk away. “Six feet, kid. Don’t skimp.”

Stricken, Laskey could only stare after him, visibly fighting tears. And Cheyenne shut off the recording.

Miss Carter put down her camera with a sigh. “I told Laskey yesterday he’d be findin’ out soon what HR expected in return for his loyalty. Didn’t think it’d be this soon.”

Cheyenne didn’t reply right away, not until after Laskey finally pulled himself together and drove off in the silver car. “What should we do now?” Cheyenne asked then, looking at Miss Carter again.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

He considered. “Maybe we should leave it for today so you can get on home to Taylor.”

She sighed and started the car. “It was a good idea. Maybe if we’d come over this morning—”

“We have no way of knowin’ whether Morozov would even have been able to talk to Yogorov before Simmons got here.” He said that for his own benefit as much as for hers. His own list of should-haves was even longer—he should have gone on into the deli; he should have worked out the idea sooner….

She put a hand on his arm, cutting off his thoughts as surely as if he’d spoken them. “And we had no way of knowin’ why Simmons was here. Hell, if Simmons had been _plannin’_ to shoot Morozov, Finch would have gotten word—maybe not in time for us to save him, but we’d have heard from Finch by now.”

He looked at her, too sick at heart to answer and not quite sure he could accept what they were trying to tell each other.

“We can’t play God,” she went on. “And we can’t save everyone. All we can do now is add this to the file against Simmons… and figure out how to use it against Quinn.”

He sighed. “Maybe I oughta go talk to Yogorov myself.”

She shook her head and put the car in gear. “No, the Yogorovs know what John looks like—he saved Elias from them, not that anyone knew it was Elias until John had him on the ferry to Manhattan. Even if Peter’s never seen John’s face up close, Lazlo has. You’re not safe anywhere in Brighton Beach if you’re tryin’ to be the Man in the Suit.” She started driving. “No, I think you’re right about leavin’ it for tonight. I’ll check with Laskey tomorrow, see if he can give us another lead.”

“All right. In the meantime, I reckon I’d better check in with Mr. Finch.” Not completely sure what to hope for, he pulled his telephone out of his pocket and dialed.

Mr. Finch sounded surprised when he answered. “Mr. Bodie? Is everything all right?”

“Yes, sir,” said Cheyenne. “I just thought I should check in. Been workin’ on somethin’ with Miss Carter today, but it… didn’t pan out like we thought it would.”

“Oh. Well, there’s nothing new on Miss Shaw, but—actually, if you’re free, would you mind joining Mr. Reese and our number? They’re searching for the key to the code used for the message we discovered last night, but so far they’ve had no success.”

Cheyenne had no reason to refuse. “Sure, I can do that, if Miss Carter’ll drop me off on her way home.”

Miss Carter agreed, so Mr. Finch sent the address, and they were off. But whatever curse had snarled the traffic on the way over seemed to still be in effect, and it took almost three hours for them to find the place. When they were a block away, Cheyenne took off his hat and called Mr. Finch back, and Mr. Finch connected him to the line he already had open to Reese’s pocket telephone just as the hoarse-voiced man with Reese realized that the code must be hidden in a heating vent.

Cheyenne was still looking at his pocket telephone when Miss Carter stopped in the middle of the block and said, “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?” Cheyenne asked, hitting the speaker button and looking up.

“Four subjects exiting a black van, wearing black suits and black masks, carrying automatic weapons— _grenade launcher!_ ” she cried at the same moment he spotted the same thing.

“Reese!” he barked, shoving his telephone back in his pocket as they both drew their guns and started to get out of the car. “Get out of there now!”

“NYPD!” she bellowed. “Drop your weapons!”

The masked gunmen, who’d been clustered around the back of the van but focused on the building where Reese was, looked at Cheyenne and Miss Carter in surprise.

“ _Drop your weapons!_ ” Cheyenne and Miss Carter ordered again.

A couple of the gunmen opened fire instead, but after diving for cover, Cheyenne shot each in the shoulder. Their fellows caught them as they fell.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” said someone who was still in the van. “We don’t have time for this—we can get Sloan later!”

Before Cheyenne and Miss Carter could even reach the intersection, the gunmen had gotten back into the van. Cheyenne tried to shoot out a tire but couldn’t see well enough and hit a taillight instead. As the van started to pull away from the curb with its back doors still open, Reese and the man who’d been with him charged out of the building, and Reese took a couple of shots at someone he could see inside and received return fire before the doors closed and the van drove away.

“Is everything all right, Mr. Reese?” Mr. Finch asked as Cheyenne and Miss Carter holstered their guns and joined Reese and the other man on the sidewalk.

“You were right, Finch,” Reese answered. “It was Collier. They were after Sloan. Merritt and Carter chased ’em off—but they’re likely to try again.”

“Did you get the book?”

Reese turned to the other man, Sloan, who handed him a book with a nod. “ _The American Revolution: A Concise History_ ,” Reese read.

“Why am I not surprised?” Finch muttered.

“I gotta go move my car,” Carter said quietly. “I’ll be right back.” At Reese’s nod, she left.

“I found a copy of the book online,” Mr. Finch reported. “It seems to match the algorithm used to encode the message… just a moment… oh, this is troubling.”

“What’s the message?” Reese asked.

“It’s a plan to kill Jason Greenfield.”

Sloan looked stunned, and Cheyenne suddenly realized he’d left his telephone on speaker.

Reese frowned. “Greenfield? Isn’t he already dead?”

“Apparently not,” answered Mr. Finch. “Mr. Greenfield turned himself in to the CIA. There’s rather more here than I anticipated—you’d better get Mr. Sloan off the street in case they try to come back.”

“I doubt they will,” said Cheyenne as Miss Carter pulled up to the curb. “They said they didn’t have time for a fight. It’s still a good idea, though,” he added and opened the back door to usher Reese and Sloan in. Reese pulled the door closed behind him, and Cheyenne jogged back around to shotgun and got in himself.

As Miss Carter drove away again, Sloan leaned forward. “So my brother’s really alive?”

“So it seems, Mr. Sloan,” Mr. Finch’s voice answered through the car’s speakers before Cheyenne could get his telephone out of his pocket—Cheyenne decided not to ask how. “The CIA faked Jason’s death, ostensibly for his protection, and then imprisoned him at a black site. They’re moving him again _tonight_.”

“So Collier plans to intercept the truck and kill Greenfield while he’s out in the open,” Reese surmised.

“Yes. The decryption program’s just coming to the timetable now.”

Cheyenne frowned. “Collier’s got a mole in the CIA?”

“It’s possible,” said Reese, “but Greenfield was one of several hackers working for Collier’s group, so it’s equally possible that the information came from another hacker. The CIA’s data security is tight, but it’s not impenetrable.”

“Oh, no wonder Collier ordered a retreat so quickly,” Mr. Finch murmured.

“Find something?” Miss Carter asked.

“This timetable calls for the hit team to arrive at a certain intersection at 7:25,” Mr. Finch reported.

“And two of ’em took some lead, thanks to Merritt.”

“Way the traffic’s been today, it’ll be hard enough for ’em to hit that mark,” Cheyenne noted, reloading his gun. “It’ll be even harder if they have to stop for more men.”

“Precisely,” said Mr. Finch. “I’m still working on locating where they plan to kill Greenfield.”

“Stop here,” Reese told Miss Carter. “Merritt and I can take my car. You get Sloan back to the safe house.”

“No way,” Sloan insisted as Miss Carter stopped. “Maybe I can’t shoot straight, but I am not gonna sit on the sidelines when my brother’s life is in danger.”

“Collier wants to kill you, too, Sloan.”

“I don’t care.”

Reese and Cheyenne exchanged a look, and Reese sighed. “All right, you’re with me, but stay in the car. Merritt can go with Carter.”

“Thank you,” said Sloan and followed Reese out of the car and across the street.

“I’ve got it,” Mr. Finch announced as Miss Carter started driving again. “Sending you the coordinates.”

Cheyenne’s telephone beeped, and he showed it to Miss Carter.

“Got it,” said Miss Carter. “We’re on our way.”

“See you there,” said Reese.

“Please be careful, all of you,” said Mr. Finch.

“What time is that transport supposed to arrive with Greenfield?” Miss Carter asked.

“The operation is scheduled to begin at 7:30.”

“All right, that gives us a few minutes to set up. I know Cooper Square—I’ll park around on the blind side, since Collier’s seen this vehicle.”

“I’ll try to access the surveillance cameras around the intersection to help coordinate the action.”

“And I’ll try to park closer to Collier,” Reese chimed in. “He saw me, but he doesn’t know what I’m driving.”

“All right,” Miss Carter agreed. “So bring us up to speed here, Finch. What’s goin’ on?”

There was a little gasp from Mr. Finch’s end. “I’m terribly sorry—there hasn’t been time for introductions. The gentleman with Mr. Reese is Timothy Sloan, an estate investigator for the New York Public Administrator and Jason Greenfield’s foster brother. Greenfield had been involved with the privacy activists who were responsible for terrorizing Wayne Kruger this summer—that was before you arrived, Mr. Bodie.”

Miss Carter frowned. “Wayne Kruger… the data broker who got killed?”

“Precisely. Peter Collier was the man who killed him after shooting Mr. Reese. Greenfield apparently objected to the killing and tried to leave the group by turning himself in to the CIA. Unfortunately, Sloan recognized that something was wrong with the reports of Greenfield’s death and began his own investigation….”

“Which made Collier want to kill Sloan as much as he wants to kill Greenfield,” Cheyenne concluded, finally understanding the situation.

“Well, we won’t let that happen,” Miss Carter declared, and Cheyenne agreed with a nod.

It was 7:27 when Miss Carter parked out of sight of Cooper Square, made sure her telephone was connected to the same channel as Reese’s and Cheyenne’s, and directed Cheyenne to a point where he could see but not be seen. Then she left to take up her own position on the other end of the fenced hedge that decorated the near side of the small park. Praying they’d pull this off, Cheyenne went to the spot she’d directed him to and peered through the hedge just as Reese drove through the intersection and parked. Reese reported his arrival and stated that he could see Collier’s van; Cheyenne couldn’t, but he could see the intersection—and the man with the pushcart just beyond, which he reported in turn. Reese and Miss Carter both confirmed that they could see him, too.

“All right, stay frosty, everyone,” Reese finally said. “Any minute now.”

And it was only a minute or so before Mr. Finch said, “There’s a produce truck headed toward that intersection. That could be the one transporting Greenfield.”

The man with the cart advanced off the curb a short way and stopped again. Cheyenne drew his gun.

“Got visual on the truck,” Miss Carter said.

“Confirmed,” said Reese. “Passing my position in five… four… three… two…. _Shaw?!_ ”

“Mr. Reese?” Mr. Finch prompted.

“I just found Shaw,” Reese repeated.

The man on the corner pulled the cover off his cart and shoved it into the intersection.

“Unfortunately, so did Collier,” said Reese, and Cheyenne heard his door open and close.

Then there was an explosion as the truck collided with the cart and red paint flew everywhere, causing the truck’s driver to lose control and hit a car that was parked near the intersection. Reese and the man who’d pushed the cart exchanged fire as the hit team rushed out of the van and started toward the truck, and Cheyenne came around the end of the hedge to start firing on them just as the back of the truck burst open and Root emerged. Cheyenne could see Sam in the truck’s shotgun seat, however, unconscious from the collision, and a member of the hit team was advancing on her door with what looked at first like a gun until Cheyenne recognized it as a power drill. Deciding that man was a more immediate threat than Root, Cheyenne shot him in the shoulder, which knocked him down, and ran to open Sam’s door, trading fire with the unmasked black man who was still standing by the back of the van, who Cheyenne guessed must be Collier. Sam was just coming around when Cheyenne got to her.

“Cheyenne,” she gasped and grabbed the driver’s gun as Cheyenne lifted her down.

“You all right, Sam?” he asked.

“Fine. Gotta save someone.”

“I’ll cover you.”

“Thanks,” she said and dashed toward the back of the truck while Cheyenne kept shooting at Collier.

Collier, for his part, raced across the intersection toward Reese’s car, where Sloan, contrary to his word, had gotten out to call to his brother, whom Root was dragging away somewhere with two members of the hit team on her heels. Sam and Miss Carter chased after them, while Cheyenne and Reese, shouting for Sloan to get back in the car, tried to pin Collier down. Finally, before Collier could reach Sloan, two shots went home at nearly the same moment—Cheyenne’s in Collier’s right shoulder, Reese’s in his right knee. Screaming, Collier dropped.

“We got Collier, Finch,” Reese announced over more distant shots as he and Cheyenne converged on the fallen outlaw. “Do we leave him for NYPD or bring him in?”

“Bring him in, Mr. Reese,” Mr. Finch ordered. “He may not be willing to talk to us, but we can at least remove him from the chess board.”

“Oh, I know a few ways to make a man talk that they probably don’t teach anymore,” Cheyenne stated.

“Who are you?” Collier demanded from the pavement.

Reese smiled coldly and took Collier’s pocket telephone. “I’m the man you shot in the back, and I’m here to return the favor.” He punctuated that by smashing the telephone with his heel.

“And… h-how do you… keep showin’ up… at Vigilance… operations?”

“I’m persistent.”

“And ‘Energy… and persistence….’”

“‘Conquer all things,’” Cheyenne finished the quotation from Benjamin Franklin as the two Men in the Suit holstered their guns, lifted Collier between them, and put him in the back seat of Reese’s car with Sloan’s help. Reese then shooed Sloan back into the shotgun seat, and Cheyenne started around the back of the car to get in beside Collier at the same time Reese went around the front to the driver’s seat.

“Collier’s not the only one we’re bringin’ in, Finch,” Miss Carter reported. “Greenfield got away safe, but Shaw just knocked Root out cold.”

Mr. Finch hesitated a moment. “Please bring everyone to the safe house. We can make further arrangements from there.”

“Right,” said Miss Carter at the same time Reese said, “On our way.”

_At least we did one thing right today after all_ , thought Cheyenne and gave Collier a handkerchief to press against the wound in his shoulder.

* * *

[1] The idea that most people in the Old West were illiterate really is a common misconception these days, but the 1880 census recorded that 83% of all adults—including former slaves who’d been forbidden from getting even the most basic education prior to Emancipation—could in fact read, up from 80% in 1870 thanks in part to concerted efforts to educate freedmen. (The Buffalo Soldiers, for example, received free schooling through the Army, and records from the post libraries at places like Fort Concho and Fort McKavett indicate that they were hungry for books once they learned to read.)


	8. Inquisition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for discussion of historical atrocities and things that should not have happened to anyone anywhere ever.

Collier passed out from pain and loss of blood on the way back to the safe house, but Sloan blindfolded himself and waited patiently in the car while Reese and Cheyenne carried Collier inside and Sam and Miss Carter followed with Root (and Cheyenne’s hat, which Sam wore until they got inside). While Miss Carter tied Root to a chair, Cheyenne brought Sam the first aid and surgery kits and Reese prepared the dining table to serve as an operating table. But Sam, understandably, first drew a quantity of sedative into a syringe and dosed Root with it. Then, while Sam scrubbed her hands in the kitchen, Miss Carter left to take Sloan home and Mr. Finch arrived with food and a small cold-box that held several bags of blood and other fluids Sam would need to help Collier recover from the blood loss.

After Reese and Cheyenne got Collier situated on the table for Sam to work on, Reese went to the kitchen to scrub his own hands. Cheyenne started to follow, but he was stopped by Mr. Finch’s hand on his arm.

“Would you come with me, please?” Mr. Finch murmured when Cheyenne turned to him. “There are some accommodations we need to make immediately.”

Cheyenne glanced around, but none of the things that needed doing there were things Reese and Sam couldn’t handle without him, so he nodded. “Yes, sir.” He retrieved his hat and followed Mr. Finch back down to the parking garage.

“I saved you a couple of hamburgers and an order of French fries,” Mr. Finch said as they got into his car. Once Cheyenne was settled, Mr. Finch gestured to the paper bag on the dashboard and a cup in the cupholder. “Also a lemonade. I had mine on the way over, but I know you haven’t eaten yet, and the task I need your help with may prove somewhat strenuous.”

“What task is that?” Cheyenne asked, taking the bag and opening the first hamburger.

Mr. Finch waited until he’d backed out of the parking space and was driving toward the exit to answer. “Preparing a place to house Root. I’m sure we’ll hear the whole story from Miss Shaw later, but it seems obvious that despite her efforts to save Jason Greenfield, Root remains willing to harm even the people she wants to work with, which means she’s too dangerous to simply release.”

Cheyenne swallowed the bite he’d just taken. “But she’s already escaped from one asylum. She could escape from prison just as easy.”

“Precisely, if the government didn’t send another assassin after her. The one place I can be certain she won’t escape from is the library—but I need not only to construct a cell but also to ensure that it blocks her from communicating with the Machine.”

Cheyenne frowned, confused. “Why do you need the cell to do that? Doesn’t she need a telephone?”

Mr. Finch shot him a brief sidelong look. “Cell phones can be easily stolen, Mr. Bodie. Root is an accomplished pickpocket. But what have you read about Michael Faraday’s experiments with electricity?”

_Faraday_ was a name Cheyenne knew but hadn’t heard in a long time. He drank some lemonade while he tried to remember. “Not a lot that I can recall offhand,” he finally confessed. “I know his work paved the way for Sam Morse to invent the electric telegraph. But we didn’t have the means to be foolin’ around with electricity when I went to school in High Point,” he added with a wry smile. “Besides, Mr. Faraday was still alive an’ workin’ back then, but our textbooks were older’n I was.”

Mr. Finch smiled back. “So you don’t remember hearing of the concept of the Faraday cage.”

“No, sir.”

“Faraday proved that when a hollow object like an ice pail receives an electrical charge, the charge and the electromagnetic field created by the charge remain on the outside of the object, even if the object’s surface isn’t solid. For example, if lightning were to strike this car, it might melt the tires, but you and I would be perfectly safe as long as we stayed inside.”

Cheyenne’s mouth was full, but he nodded his understanding.

“Wireless devices generate electromagnetic signals, but it’s possible to construct a cage using wire mesh that can block those signals from passing from one side to the other.”

“An’ that’s what you want to use for Root’s cell?”

“Yes. It may not be more escape-resistant than mere bars, but it would hold Root incommunicado very effectively, and I have other means for ensuring that she stays there when we’re finished. I can handle the electrical work needed, but it would help me tremendously for you to do what heavy lifting there will be.”

“I’ll be happy to. Kind of a nice change, gettin’ to build somethin’ for once—ain’t had much chance since I’ve been here.”

Mr. Finch smiled, plainly pleased that Cheyenne was pleased.

Cheyenne finished his meal before they reached the library, so he was ready to work as soon as they arrived. Mr. Finch had already picked out a small reading room with its own privy on a lower floor than the command center, and between them, they made short work of setting up the cage and connecting the electrical generator. Then they went upstairs to collect Bear, checked that all was still well at the safe house, and left.

They were almost to the car when the nearest pay telephone began to ring. Mr. Finch hobbled over to answer it, listened briefly, hung up, and started hobbling back inside again.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bodie,” he said as Cheyenne followed with Bear. “This shouldn’t take long, but we have two new numbers, and I need to decode them before we leave. I can do more research at the safe house.”

“You think one might be Collier?” Cheyenne asked once they were inside.

“Possibly. If so, we already have a start on understanding the threat, and he is already in our custody.”

Upstairs, Mr. Finch quickly located six books to take back to his desk, and Cheyenne concentrated on playing with Bear while Mr. Finch worked. As expected, the decoding didn’t take long.

In fact, it was less than a minute before Cheyenne heard Mr. Finch murmur, “Peter _Brandt_. I wonder….” Mr. Finch typed rapidly for a moment and then said, “Oh, that’s interesting.”

“Sir?” Cheyenne prompted, looking up while still playing tug-o’-war with Bear’s stuffed bone.

“It seems ‘Peter Collier’ is an alias,” Mr. Finch replied at a more conversational volume and stood up. “Both numbers belong to the same man—his real name is Peter Brandt. His digital footprint under that name has been largely erased, but I did find one photo of him, in a crowd at his college graduation in 2003. I can’t tell what it means that the Machine gave us both identities; the most obvious reason for the threat is his capture, but the members of his group seem to know him only as Collier.”

Cheyenne put Bear back on his leash and stood in turn. “Maybe the threat’s from someone who knows both identities, like whoever recruited him into this Vigilance group in the first place.”

“Well, that’s possible. I suppose we’ll simply have to ask him.”

With that, they left the library again and went back to the safe house, where Reese had brought in a bed like the ones at the hospital—from where, Cheyenne didn’t know—and Collier, now lying on it with his knee and shoulder bandaged and his arm in a sling, hadn’t yet come around after the surgery. Apparently Sam and Reese had just moved him; the bed was still in the dining room, and Sam was scrubbing the table while Reese hooked a half-empty bag of blood onto a pole attached to the head of the bed. Collier was attached to a stand of beeping monitors, too, which prompted a phantom ache in Cheyenne’s chest, even though his ribs had long since healed from the fall that had brought him here.

“Is he stable?” Mr. Finch asked Sam quietly, hobbling over to the table.

“For the moment,” Sam replied at the same volume. “I’ll need to watch his vitals overnight, but I’ve still got one unit of whole blood and two of plasma if he needs them, plus the Ringer’s lactate. Thanks for those, by the way.”

“Do let me know if you need more.”

“If I do, I will, but I shouldn’t as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid like trying to escape. But…” Sam paused and handed a small dish to Mr. Finch. “I found more than a bullet in his shoulder.”

Mr. Finch frowned into the dish. “A microchip?”

“Like someone took off Alicia Corwin’s body,” said Reese, apparently referring to a past case Cheyenne hadn’t heard about. “I’ve disabled it in case there was a GPS transponder in it, but you may still be able to get some data off it.”

Cheyenne came over to get Mr. Finch a chair and glanced into the dish as he passed. The so-called microchip looked to him like a little metal cylinder, maybe an inch and a half long.

“But what connection would Collier have with Alicia Corwin?” Mr. Finch murmured as he sat down in the chair Cheyenne offered him and set the dish back on the table. “She worked on the very project he seems to want to destroy.”

His careful word choice wasn’t lost on Cheyenne. And it was wise, because no sooner had he said that than Collier groaned and stirred.

“Take it easy, Collier,” Reese warned at a normal volume, pressing on Collier’s left shoulder to keep him still. “My colleague won’t be happy if you move too suddenly and undo her handiwork. She might just let you bleed out next time.”

Collier opened his eyes and frowned around in confusion. “Where the hell am I?” he asked weakly.

“A safe place,” Mr. Finch answered. “And I, too, strongly advise you not to attempt to escape. Your current wounds are severe enough as it stands.”

“What is this? First you shoot me, then you save me?”

“We don’t want you dead, Mr. Collier—which I admit is more mercy than you showed to Wayne Kruger and more mercy than your colleagues are willing to show you.”

Collier’s frown deepened. “What are you talking about?”

“We have information that your life is now in danger. It seems only logical that your colleagues plan to do to you what you planned to do to Jason Greenfield.”

“Vigilance? No… no, look, how long was I out?”

“Couple of hours,” answered Reese.

“Long enough for a few panicked phone calls from whoever got away at Cooper Square,” Sam noted.

“And this information reached us within the last hour,” Mr. Finch added, “so it stands to reason that it somehow relates to your capture.”

Collier shook his head. “It _can’t_ be Vigilance. There hasn’t been time.”

“Time for what?” Cheyenne asked.

“For a full debate and a vote. Even if someone already has the poll up on our chat server, our members on the West Coast and in Hawaii and Alaska aren’t even online right now. These things take _days_ , usually.”

“Did you vote on Tim Sloan?” asked Reese.

“Yes. It didn’t go his way. Some of our members were willing to let him live, but the majority were against it.”

“Sounds like the old blood-games in Rome,” Cheyenne observed. “When a gladiator lost, the crowd used to vote on whether the victor should kill him or not.”

“It’s not a _game_ ,” Collier snapped. “We have two guiding principles: privacy and democracy. We’re preparing the ground for a new American Revolution, to shut down the people in the government and out of it who spy on Americans and refuse to acknowledge the damage that’s done when the right to privacy is violated as systematically as it is now.”

Sam snorted indelicately, and Cheyenne privately agreed with her. He could understand being upset about the spying—he wasn’t too happy about it himself—but from what little he’d seen, the means Vigilance employed couldn’t be justified even by such high-sounding ends.

Mr. Finch, on the other hand, narrowed his eyes. “Was there a vote taken on whether to kill Jason Greenfield?”

Collier suddenly clammed up.

“There wasn’t, was there? His death was ordered by a higher authority.” Mr. Finch leaned closer. “The message center in the storage unit—where do the messages come from?”

Collier didn’t answer.

“Who tells you to go there? Who monitors the camera?”

Collier remained silent.

“You know,” Reese said casually, “the longest it’s ever taken me to break someone is sixteen hours.”

Collier huffed. “What, now you’re gonna waterboard me?”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Please. Waterboarding is for amateurs.”

“We don’t have to actively torture you when you’re already in pain,” said Reese, which was enough explanation of what _waterboarding_ meant that Cheyenne could keep up. “We could just withhold painkillers until you tell us what we want to know.”

Collier didn’t answer, but he seemed to be thinking hard.

“Of course, if you insist, I’m sure my friend here might have some ideas.” Reese looked at Cheyenne.

“A few,” said Cheyenne, unbuttoning his jacket. “There’s one old trick the Sioux used to use on their prisoners.” He drew his knife, making sure Collier got a good look at the blade. “They’d take a steel knife and heat it in the fire. Once the blade was red-hot, they’d hold the flat against the sole of the prisoner’s foot. If he still wouldn’t talk, they’d insert the tip into the back o’ the ankle, between the tendon an’ the bone.”[1]

Collier’s eyes widened, and the beep of the monitor sped up. “You… you wouldn’t!”

Cheyenne exchanged a look with Reese, sheathed his knife, and went to the fireplace to start laying a fire. It _was_ mostly a bluff—even if he were willing to go that far for real, which probably wasn’t necessary in this case, he was sure Mr. Finch would put a stop to it before he could in fact burn Collier’s foot—but it was the sort of bluff that worked better when backed with the first steps of action. If nothing else, it would reveal whether Collier were more afraid of Vigilance than he was of Cheyenne.

“I thought you said you didn’t want me dead!” Collier yelped.

“Oh, it won’t kill you,” Cheyenne replied before Mr. Finch could. “Won’t even cripple you—you’ll be off your feet until that knee heals anyway, and that’ll take longer’n a burn.” He put two logs on the grate, then paused and admitted more quietly, “Does hurt like heck, though, havin’ your feet held to the fire.” Then he reached for two more logs and looked around for the kindling and tinder.

Collier gulped audibly. “Look… I don’t know, all right? I swear I don’t know. I just get these anonymous texts telling me to meet my team at the storage unit. We find the message on the wall and decode it.”

Cheyenne placed a fifth log, then found the kindling and began adding it to the fire.

“Is that also how you were recruited to join Vigilance?” Mr. Finch asked.

“Yes,” said Collier. “They told me I was a leader, but I’ve never had any idea who ‘they’ are.”

“You’re an intelligent man, Mr. Collier. Why would you choose to go along with all this?”

“Jesse Brandt,” answered a groggy female voice Cheyenne hadn’t heard before. It must have belonged to Root.

Sam swore under her breath and reached for the first aid kit, which probably meant that the sedative shouldn’t have worn off yet. Reese held up a hand to stop her.

At the same time, Mr. Finch exchanged a wary look with Cheyenne before saying, “Please continue, Miss Groves.”

Root didn’t move but said in the tone of someone reciting a memorized speech, “Jesse Brandt was arrested in 2010, classified as an illegal combatant, and held for three months without trial or counsel, until he committed suicide in despair. The official government line was that Jesse had been recruited into a terrorist cell by Aziz al-Ibrahim, whose cousin was a member of a terrorist organization back in Egypt that had bombed a US embassy. The trouble is that Aziz went to Jesse’s funeral and told Jesse’s brother Peter that he had nothing to do with his cousin’s terror cell and that Jesse was his AA sponsor.”

Cheyenne stole a glance at Collier, who was staring ashen-faced at Root.

“If that were true, Brandt should never have been on the government’s radar,” Sam noted.

“It was true, but it wasn’t the whole story,” said Root.[2] “Jesse had learned one thing from Aziz: that his cousin was a truck driver named Asif. Asif had been under government surveillance because of his terrorist activities, but even more because certain people in the government wanted to _use_ those terrorist activities for their own ends. It was several months after Jesse’s death when those plans finally came to fruition, but the people involved were so ruthless, I guess they decided the risk of Jesse even mentioning Asif to someone at the aircraft plant where he worked was too great for him to be allowed to live.”

“And what was that plan?” Reese asked in a tone that meant he already suspected the answer.

“Officially, Asif was the driver and the detonator of the truck bomb that sank the Libertas Ferry that September. In reality, the government had captured Asif, questioned him for the details of the bombing plan, and then kept him unconscious until he was placed in the truck with the bomb, which was intended to kill someone on board the ferry who had knowledge of one of those deep dark secrets that Jesse’s brother here is so determined to uncover.”

“How the hell do you know all that?” Collier demanded.

Root gave a condescending little chuckle. “A little bird told me.”

“How?” Sam pressed. “I took your earwig.”

“She has her methods.”

Cheyenne suddenly understood the need for the Faraday cage. He glanced at Mr. Finch—but Mr. Finch looked ready to faint, and Cheyenne was glad he was already sitting down. Evidently the talk of the bombing meant something to him… was that how he’d been injured?

“But to answer the larger question,” Root continued, “no, Peter doesn’t know who recruited him. He doesn’t even know about the microchip.”

Collier’s eyes widened in alarm. “What microchip?”

“Pulled this out of your arm,” Sam said with her usual lack of feeling and handed the dish to Collier, who stared into it.

“We know for sure it’s an RFID tracker,” said Reese. “We don’t know whether it also has a GPS transponder in it, but we fried it with a stun gun just in case.”

Collier let out a shaky breath. “What… how… who….”

“Decima Technologies,” Root answered.

Reese, Sam, and Mr. Finch all looked sharply at her. Collier just looked as confused as Cheyenne felt.

“It’s news to me, too,” Root admitted. “Vigilance is searching for a man named Arthur Claypool.”

Mr. Finch paled further. Cheyenne took that to mean that he knew who Claypool was, maybe even knew him personally.

“That’s true,” said Collier. “He worked for the NSA developing a program called Samaritan, a super AI meant to monitor all surveillance and identify terrorists. I’m sure you’re all aware of how such a thing could be abused.”

“Yes, well aware,” Mr. Finch agreed in a low voice, not looking at anyone.

“The program was shut down before Samaritan was brought online, but rumor has it that the drives that contain Samaritan’s coding still exist. Claypool hid them somewhere, but now supposedly he’s in a hospital somewhere with a brain tumor. Vigilance is trying to locate him to have him take us to the drives so we can destroy them.”

Mr. Finch finally looked Collier in the eye again. “And after that, what will you do with him? Will you kill him, too?”

Collier’s face hardened. “In the name of the people—”

“A sick old man who has committed no crime?!”

“It may not have been against the law, so the government won’t prosecute, but we will bring him to justice.”

“Justice?!” Cheyenne exploded, leaping to his feet and abandoning the fire unlit. “You’re not talking about justice—that’s the logic of the lynch mob!”

Collier flinched. “What the hell would a white man know about it?”

“You think blacks were the only people ever to be lynched? Fill a crowd up with liquor and hate, and all they’ll want is murder. Black, white, red, brown—they don’t care who it is, as long as somebody dies. I’ve had a rope around _my own_ neck more’n once and been threatened with it more times than that. I even watched my foster father hang when a mob thought he’d stolen cattle he’d found on his land and was returning to their rightful owner. His wife tried to plead for his life, get ’em to agree to a jury trial, and do you know what the leader of that mob said? ‘We don’t want law, we want justice.’”[3]

Collier looked away from him.

“Maybe you don’t plan to hang Claypool,” Cheyenne went on, striding over to the bed, “but no matter how hard you try to call it justice, without due process of law, it’d still be murder.”

Collier looked back at him, eyes blazing. “Due process of law?! You heard what they did to my brother! You heard what happened to that ferry! Do you think we can just sit back and watch while the government spies on us and kills Americans to protect its secrets?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You’ve got a thing for the Sioux. Well, the Sioux stood up for their rights at the Little Bighorn. Are you going to argue they _shouldn’t_ have killed George Custer?”

That set Cheyenne’s blood boiling. “The Sioux and the Cheyenne had every right to hate Custer. All he cared about, by his own admission, were promotion, glory, and gold, and he built his legend with the blood of old men, women, and children at places like Sand Creek and the Washita River. He surrounded himself with like-minded men—Fred Benteen was all right, but Marcus Reno used to speak of the Sioux as if they were a cancer, something to be eradicated, not even human.”

A surprised, wary look came into Collier’s eyes. Either he’d never heard such things, or he was shocked that Cheyenne knew them so well.

But Cheyenne was on a roll now, speaking from personal experience of things he’d never forget. “You _are_ talking the same way Dull Knife and Crazy Horse did before the Little Bighorn. Sitting Bull might have agreed to surrender if they hadn’t talked him into going through with the ambush. Yes, they killed Custer, and maybe he did deserve it. They killed a lot of other men that day. Not all of them deserved to die. Most of ’em wouldn’t have if Custer hadn’t let his pride get the better of him. Dull Knife called it a great victory, but it was a senseless waste of life that could have been avoided if white men had been willing to honor their word.”

Collier rallied with, “The Sioux were still willing to fight, and so are we.”

“But the road from the Little Bighorn led straight to _Wounded Knee!_ ”

Collier blinked rapidly, whether at Cheyenne’s vehemence or at the connection he’d never made before, Cheyenne couldn’t tell. Cheyenne himself knew of the massacre at Wounded Knee only from the books he’d read since his arrival in this year, since it had happened ten years after he’d left; but having lived through the events that led to the Little Bighorn, as well as the battle itself, he could see the path between the two clearly enough. He didn’t know whether he’d be able to prevent Wounded Knee if and when he went home—even if he tried, it might happen anyway, like the Little Bighorn—but he stood a better chance of stopping worse slaughter here and now.

“I can’t let it happen again, Collier,” he said quietly. “I won’t.”

Collier didn’t reply.

“That’s what Decima wants,” Root murmured. “A massacre.”

“How’s that?” Reese prompted.

When Cheyenne turned, Root was frowning slightly and looking in the vague direction of the sofa, but her eyes were glazed and unfocused. She seemed to be listening intently to whatever signal she was getting from the Machine (and he was _not_ going to ask how).

“Decima wants Vigilance to find Samaritan for them,” Root relayed slowly in a low voice. “But not to be destroyed. They plan to convince the government to let them bring Samaritan online, first for a test, then permanently. The reason for the permanent grant is to be some major act of violence against Control and other members of the government, either actually perpetrated by Vigilance or for which they can readily be framed. It is for this reason Peter Brandt was recruited. He is charismatic and persuasive but also easily goaded into increasingly bold acts of violence.”

Cheyenne looked back at Collier, who was avoiding eye contact with everyone.

“So Vigilance is the _Sturmabteilung_ , the Brownshirts,” Reese realized. “The bad boys who cause all the chaos—and the first to be purged once the new order takes power.”

Collier sighed. “We _love_ our country. We would never support someone like Hitler.”

“You don’t have to. He’s using you without your knowledge. Every time you go after someone like Kruger or Claypool, you play right into Decima’s hands.”

The muscle in Collier’s jaw worked as he considered that.

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” Mr. Finch interrupted softly. “Mr. Collier has just undergone major surgery. He needs to rest, and so do we. We can continue this conversation another time.”

Sam and Reese exchanged a look at that and nodded to each other. Sam came around the bed to the monitor stand while Reese took hold of the handrail at the head of the bed, and together they rolled Collier and his monitors away toward the bedroom. For his part, Cheyenne looked inquiringly at Mr. Finch and nodded toward Root, who was still lolling listlessly in the armchair. Mr. Finch nodded back, so Cheyenne went to untie her while Mr. Finch stood and picked up the end of Bear’s leash.

Root looked up when Cheyenne reached her. “Cheyenne. She has a message for you.”

“Oh?” Cheyenne asked and went to work on the knots.

“I apologize for scaring you,” she said in the same low, slow voice she’d used before when speaking for the Machine. “I did not know how else to assist you. But now I must ask you to do one thing for me.”

“What might that be?”

Root responded with a string of nine words that made no sense to Cheyenne at all.

Mr. Finch, on the other hand, inhaled sharply. “Det. Carter.”

“Is she in danger?” Cheyenne asked.

“Not imminent,” Root relayed, “but she will be if she continues her pursuit of HR. She is right to do so, but I….” She paused, then continued with tears in her eyes, “I must allow Admin to take my analog interface offline for maintenance, and my other available assets will not be enough to save her. Without her, Samaritan will rise, and many will die. Please, Cheyenne Bodie… please save Jocelyn Carter.”

Cheyenne swallowed hard. “I’ll do my best—but not because you asked me to. I’ll do it because… well, even if she weren’t my friend, it’s the right thing to do.”

“Thank you,” Root whispered, then started crying silently as Cheyenne removed the ropes and gathered her into his arms. Whatever the Machine had meant about letting Mr. Finch _take my analog interface offline for maintenance_ , it had clearly upset Root, and the sedative was apparently preventing her from hiding that fact.

“Go back to sleep now, Miss Groves,” Mr. Finch ordered softly.

“You’re not my boss, Harold,” Root murmured grouchily even as her eyes closed, but she was asleep again before they even reached the stairs.

They were almost to the door when Reese came back around the corner to the dining room. “Finch?”

“We’re taking Root on to more permanent quarters,” Finch stage-whispered. “I think it’s best to keep her away from Collier from now on.”

Reese nodded his understanding. “Want me to stay here with Shaw?”

“Probably best. I’ll keep Bear with me for tonight. Call if you need anything.”

“We will. Good night.”

“Night,” Cheyenne returned with a nod. Then Mr. Finch opened the door for him, and together they left with Bear at their heels.

Mr. Finch made one stop on the way back to the library to retrieve a package. Once they had arrived and Cheyenne had carried Root into the Faraday cage and laid her on the window seat, Mr. Finch opened the package and took two devices out of it. One he stuck under the table that stood in the center of the room; the other, after some beeping and booping, he strapped securely to Root’s ankle.

“It’s called an ankle monitor,” he whispered as the two men left. “Normally, it’s used to enforce house arrest, but I’ve modified this one to also deliver an electric shock if she goes beyond the proximity radius programmed into the monitor.”

Cheyenne’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “This payback for her usin’ that taser on Sam?”

“Merely the most efficient tool for the job,” Mr. Finch said mildly. “I’ll drive you home.”

* * *

[1] Whether this was a real thing the Sioux did in our world, I don’t know, but Cheyenne threatens a prisoner with it in 2.14 “Big Ghost Basin.”

[2] What follows is my own headcanon (at least for this AU), since we’re never given the true explanation for Jesse’s arrest in canon.

[3] Among the _Cheyenne_ episodes referenced here are 1.8 “The Storm Riders,” 2.4 “The Bounty Killers,” 5.1 “The Long Rope,” 5.8 “The Return of Mr. Grimm,” and 6.5 “Day’s Pay.”


	9. Breakthrough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the conversation in this chapter and the next two was inspired by Michaelssw0rd’s banner for the POI Big Bang. Also, I’m having to guesstimate dates for “The Perfect Mark” based on the dates given for “Mors Praematura” (October 9-12) and “Endgame”/“The Crossing” (November 10-13); there are no holiday references in “The Perfect Mark” that would help me pin it down relative to Halloween, but there’s a moment in the next chapter that works a little better if it’s set before Daylight Savings ends on November 3.

“So, like, I don’t actually know in what _order_ the tasing and the drugging happened,” Sam said the next morning over breakfast Cheyenne and Mr. Finch had brought from the Lyric Diner. “I just know I woke up, and she was there, and I couldn’t get up to take her down before she tased me. Then the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the front seat of her car, zip-tied to the steering wheel.”

“Did she say anything, like why she grabbed you?” Reese asked, helping himself to another Belgian waffle.

Sam shook her head. “Just cryptic stuff about the Machine giving her a mission that doesn’t fit with the relevant-irrelevant split. In fact, most of what she said the last three days was cryptic because apparently the Machine only tells her what to do right before she’s supposed to do it. What she said last night about Decima? I actually believed her when she said that was the first time she’d heard any of it.” She stuffed an entire strip of bacon into her mouth.

Mr. Finch pulled a wry face and passed Reese his plate for more eggs Benedict. “I suppose we have Collier to thank for the Machine’s decision to give us a straight answer about the bigger picture.”

“So why’d you guys steal the medical supply van?” asked Reese.

“Mm!” Sam answered, held up a finger, and swallowed. “Oxygen tank. I used that with spaghetti to make a thermal lance.”

“What for?”

“There’s a maintenance tunnel or something that runs under Cooper Square, but the entrance was blocked with a grate. Root had me cut a hole in it to serve as an escape hatch for Greenfield.” Sam swiped a bite of Cheyenne’s steak and eggs with her knife. “Then we went to a CIA drop site so Root could be ‘captured’ yesterday and get us both in the truck with Greenfield.” She popped the bite in her mouth.

Cheyenne moved his plate and glared at her to stop her from stealing another. “If you wanted steak and eggs, you shoulda said so when we called.”

Unrepentant, Sam went back to eating all the bacon. Reese moved that container and put a second bacon-cheese omelet on her plate. She made a very unladylike gesture but doused the omelet in Tabasco sauce and tucked into it like she hadn’t already had one.

Mr. Finch shook his head, but not at their antics. “I still don’t understand why the Machine would send two teams into the same battle with different assignments. Why keep us in the dark about the Greenfield mission? What is this new third category into which Greenfield apparently falls?”

“Last night, it referred to Root as its analog interface,” Cheyenne noted. “What does that mean?”

“I can answer only in the most general terms,” said Mr. Finch. “Computer code, in its most basic form, is expressed as binary numbers, strings of ones and zeroes. Because those are digits, computers are considered digital machines, and by extension anything computerized or anything that exists solely on a computer or that can be accessed only by computer is called ‘digital.’ The rest of the world is called ‘analog.’ And an interface is a point where two systems connect and interact.”

Cheyenne nodded slowly. “So… the Machine is digital. To interact with the analog side of the world, it needs an interface.”

Mr. Finch looked relieved that he’d understood. “Yes, exactly.”

“But why Root?”

“That’s the $64,000 question,” said Reese.

Sam made a disgusted noise. “I swear, she talks to that thing like it’s her girlfriend.”

“Jealous?” Reese teased and ate a piece of bacon.

“What? No. Are you kidding?”

Cheyenne decided not even to try to work out what they were talking about. His not-so-old discomfort with the idea of artificial intelligence was coming back with a vengeance, not helped at all by the notion that the Machine had _apologized_ to him or by the idea that it was aware enough of its own limitations and its difference from humans to have chosen a go-between—not that he thought much of its selection of Root when, by Reese’s own admission, she wasn’t the only person it had ever spoken to that way, even before Cheyenne had come along.

And speaking of coming back with a vengeance, Sam made another stab at Cheyenne’s steak. Unfortunately for her, his arms were long enough to move his plate two seats away and back before she could run past him. She squeaked indignantly, which caught Bear’s attention, and when Cheyenne continued to block her, she smacked his shoulder—not hard, but hard enough to feel.

“Get your own!” he insisted.

“I thought you claimed me as your sister!” she shot back.

“That don’t entitle you to my steak!”

Bear barked, and Mr. Finch looked like he was getting a headache.

“Now, children,” Reese chided, not quite able to keep from smiling.

“If you’re not going to finish your omelet, Miss Shaw…” Mr. Finch began.

Sam hit Cheyenne again, went back to her seat, and wolfed down the rest of her omelet in record time.

Mr. Finch turned to Reese. “By the way, Mr. Reese, Sloan’s asked us to meet him at Greenfield’s apartment this afternoon for a final farewell.”

Reese nodded. “Sounds good.”

Cheyenne put the last bite of his steak in his mouth a split second before Sam’s knife hit his empty plate. She huffed and tried to swipe another piece of bacon, only for Reese to catch her wrist.

“You’ll give yourself indigestion eating that fast, Shaw,” he said seriously.

Sam rolled her eyes and pulled back. “Okay, fine. Can I go home now?”

“Is Collier stable?” Mr. Finch asked.

“Yeah, his blood pressure’s stabilized. I’ll pick up a phone on my way home and text you the number, but _don’t_ call unless it’s an emergency—like, ‘need a surgeon stat’ kind of emergency. I haven’t showered or slept in three days, so y’know. I’d like to do both.”

“We understand,” Mr. Finch said for all the men. “Thank you, and—it’s good to have you back, Miss Shaw.”

“Yeah, whatever.” But Sam made sure to give Bear some farewell scratches on her way out the door.

Cheyenne shook his head as the door closed behind Sam. “I don’t think I ever will get used to her.”

Reese smiled. “She wouldn’t pick on you like that if she didn’t like you. She likes you even more because you fight back.”

Mr. Finch sighed. “Well, if you’ve finished your meal, Mr. Bodie, would you mind seeing if our guest is ready for his?”

“Yes, sir,” Cheyenne agreed with a nod and took his plate to the kitchen. Since Collier couldn’t walk without assistance yet, Mr. Finch had assigned Cheyenne to the safe house for the day in case Collier needed anything—and in case the microchip _had_ contained a GPS transponder that Decima might have tracked already.

Cheyenne paused in the hall on his way and used the reflection in the glass of a picture to look into the bedroom so as not to disturb Collier if he was still asleep. Collier was awake and looking out the window, however, so after Cheyenne put his own plate in the sink, he found a bed tray and loaded it with Collier’s covered plate, which had been keeping warm on the back burner, and a napkin and a cup of coffee. Then he turned off the burner and carried the tray into the bedroom.

“Mornin’,” he said as he walked in. “Hope we didn’t wake you.”

“No more than that did,” Collier replied, gesturing toward the monitor stand with his left thumb. “What was all that about, though?”

“Ah, little sisters.”

Collier laughed.

Cheyenne set the tray over Collier’s lap and took the cover off the plate to reveal the sandwich he’d ordered, since Collier had been asleep when Mr. Finch had called and neither Mr. Finch nor Sam had been sure what Collier would want for breakfast. “It’s a grilled cheese sandwich with extra bacon and tomato,” he announced, unwrapping it for Collier. “I’ve had these a few times; they’re pretty tasty, even with what passes for a tomato this late in the year. An’ I’ve had my arm in a sling often enough to know how tough it is to try to eat with your left hand when you’re not used to it.”

Collier eyed the sandwich skeptically. “Thanks… I guess.” The diner had cut the sandwich on the diagonal, so he picked up one half and took a tentative bite—and his eyes lit up in pleased surprise. “Mm!” He nodded at Cheyenne and flashed a thumbs-up with his right hand.

Cheyenne grinned. “Well, I’ll let you get on with it.” And he turned to go.

“Mm,” said Collier, shaking his head when Cheyenne looked at him again, and swallowed his bite of sandwich. “No, please stay. I’d like to talk to you.”

Cheyenne paused. “All right. Do you mind if I get myself some more coffee first?”

“No, not at all. While you’re at it, could you bring me some creamer for mine?”

“I think what we’ve got is half-and-half. Is that all right?”

Collier shrugged. “Sure.”

Cheyenne nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

Reese was in the kitchen, washing the breakfast dishes, when Cheyenne walked in. “Finch already left,” Reese reported quietly. “He has to put in an appearance at Universal Heritage Insurance this week, so it might as well be today.”

Cheyenne smiled in amusement. Having needed only two cover identities so far, neither of which held office jobs, he hadn’t had to do the sort of two-step that Mr. Finch and Reese did to keep up appearances. He’d often wondered how they managed it when they had a case; now he knew.

“How’s Collier?” Reese continued.

“Awake and eatin’,” Cheyenne answered, finding a clean mug and pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Says he wants to talk to me.”

Reese’s eyebrows shot up, but then he nodded thoughtfully. “Hope that’s a good sign.”

“Me, too.”

“By the way, about Finch… I saw the look you gave him when Root mentioned the ferry bombing.”

“And?” Cheyenne asked, hoping Collier hadn’t also noticed.

Reese lowered his voice further. “You’re half right. They were after Nathan Ingram, Finch’s business partner and his best friend since they went to MIT together. Nobody else involved with Northern Lights knew Finch even existed until last year. They did kill Ingram. But Finch was there, too, and that _was_ when he was injured.”

Cheyenne nodded slowly.

“I don’t think Shaw knows,” Reese added. “Finch didn’t tell me until we got back from Oregon in May, and that was after we’d been working together for two years. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

Cheyenne nodded again. “I understand. I’ll keep it under my hat.”

Reese smiled. “Thanks.”

On that note, Cheyenne collected a spoon and the half-and-half and went back to the bedroom. Collier had already finished one half of his sandwich and was working on the other when Cheyenne came in, so Cheyenne poured cream into Collier’s coffee until he said when, stirred it for him, and took cream and spoon back to the kitchen before returning with his own coffee.

“All right,” Cheyenne said, pulling a chair up to the bed. “What’d you want to talk about?”

“Not that it’s any of my business, really,” Collier began carefully, “but… where’d you hear what Crazy Horse and Dull Knife said before the Little Bighorn?”

Cheyenne decided to go for a more plausible explanation than _I was there_. “I was raised on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.”

Collier blinked in surprise. “Really?!”

Cheyenne nodded. “I was adopted as a baby by a Cheyenne family. Grew up hearin’ all the old stories.”

“Huh, wow. Sorry, I’m just… surprised an adoption agency would allow that.”

“Well, I don’t know all the whys an’ wherefores. All my father told me is that my folks were killed in a wreck an’ they couldn’t find any o’ my kin to come claim me.”

Collier nodded thoughtfully. “But you said you had a foster family.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Cheyenne took a drink of coffee while he considered how to explain that. “See, my father got into a blood feud with one o’ the local ranchers. Long story short, when I was twelve, I went to live with a white family on another ranch. Stayed with them about three years, until Mr. Pierce was killed, an’ then I went back to the reservation until I was eighteen.” _Pierce_ was a common enough name that Cheyenne reckoned it was safe to mention.

Collier nodded again. “And then what, Army?”

“Among other things.” Cheyenne punctuated that with a drink of coffee and hoped that would be a clear enough signal that he wouldn’t share more.

Collier washed down the last bite of his sandwich with a drink of his own coffee. “I just wondered,” he said when he’d swallowed. “You seem to know a lot about things I’ve never read in any history book.”

Cheyenne shrugged. “History books can only tell you so much.”

“You mean history’s written by the winners.”

“Well, not only that. Every historian’s got his own views of the past, and even when he’s tryin’ to be fair, he’s still got to pick an’ choose how to make the facts fit together in a story folks can read without gettin’ lost. You take the Little Bighorn, for example. Most books’ll give you a map with neat little markers and arrows an’ labels that tell you ‘Benteen was here,’ ‘Reno was there,’ ‘Custer was over yonder,’ an’ so on. Battles are never that neat in real life; they’re chaos. Even when there’s a good, clear plan based on good information about the terrain an’ the enemy’s strength, it never goes exactly like you figured. It’s worse when your information’s wrong or your scouts lied to you. The books can’t tell what it was like to be there on the ground, either—what Benteen saw, what Reno heard, the smell o’ the dust an’ gunpowder an’ horse an’ blood, the awful hate that went through the Cheyenne when Custer had the band play ‘Garryowen,’ the shouts o’ the warriors an’ the screams o’ the dyin’. You’ll never find those in any book, not even if a historian had dared to ask. There aren’t words for ’em.”

There weren’t words for the nightmares, either—Cheyenne had woken up screaming again several times before Mr. Finch had called that morning—but admitting that would be tantamount to admitting he’d been there as Touch the Sky. He may have come too close to doing so already. Besides, he’d said more about the Little Bighorn in the past twelve hours than he had since Reno’s hearing. He really hoped Collier wouldn’t ask for further details.

“I dunno,” said Collier. “That was pretty evocative, what you just said.”

Cheyenne shook his head. “Doesn’t even scratch the surface. It’s like tryin’ to explain what it’s like the first time you fall in love, or the first time you lose someone, or the first time you kill a man.”

Collier suddenly found his coffee very interesting. Cheyenne waited, though, and eventually Collier sighed. “The men I’ve killed deserved to die,” he said quietly, not looking up.

“Really? You were all set to kill Sloan. What’d he ever do to you?”

“He was getting too close.”

“So it’s all right to kill to protect secrets as long as they’re your own?”

Collier looked up at that, annoyed. “Why are you defending the government?”

Cheyenne shrugged. “I’m not. I ain’t too happy about the spyin’ myself, and what happened to your brother was wrong.”

“Then you understand why I have to get justice.”

“I understand, all right, but you’re not talkin’ about justice. You’re talkin’ vengeance.”

Collier looked away with a huff. “What’s the difference?”

“Justice can be satisfied.”

Collier looked at him again with a confused frown.

“Justice has limits,” Cheyenne explained. “Justice draws a clear line, says ‘This far, no further,’ and won’t cross that line no matter what. Justice can be tempered with mercy and compassion. There’s no room for those in revenge. Even if revenge draws the line an’ doesn’t cross it, it always feels hollow. But too often revenge blurs the line or won’t draw it at all. Then you can’t stop killin’ until there’s nobody left—only the empty place you couldn’t fill, ’cause all that blood won’t bring back the one you lost.”

“Set out to correct the world’s wrongs,” Reese added softly from the doorway, “and you’ll almost certainly end up adding to them.”

Collier looked down at his coffee again.

Cheyenne watched in silence for a moment until an old memory suddenly came back to him. “You know, I met a priest once,” he began, “down near the border in a town called Security. The local landowner ran that place like his own private kingdom, paid the people who lived there in food an’ shelter so they couldn’t afford to leave.”

Collier huffed and looked up. “Sounds like slavery.”

“Well, it was in all but name.” Most of the people who’d lived there, in fact, had been Southerners who’d lost everything either during the war or in the first year of Reconstruction, and it had been the height of irony for them to have fallen into Manuel Loza’s trap—but Cheyenne hadn’t dared to say so even in 1866, let alone now. Besides, trading freedom for security was never a good bargain, no matter how one looked at it. “Anyway,” he continued, “I got to talkin’ with Father Mendez, and he said somethin’ I’ll never forget.”

“Which was?”

“He said when men decide to play God, they find out pretty quick the only one o’ His powers they have is the power of destruction.”[1]

Collier sighed heavily. “Sometimes things have to be destroyed so they can be rebuilt.”

“Rebuilt into what, though? Seems to me your Vigilance pals haven’t thought that through.”

Collier shook his head stubbornly. “The people we target deserve to die.”

“‘Many that live deserve death,’” Reese countered—and for once, Cheyenne recognized the quotation. He hadn’t gotten far in reading _The Lord of the Rings_ , but he did remember this part and nodded as Reese continued, “‘And some who die deserve life,’ like your brother. ‘Can you give it to them?’”

Collier closed his eyes in pain that obviously wasn’t physical.

“Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement,” Cheyenne recited further. “For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

Collier shook his head again and opened his eyes. “I have to make them pay for what they did to Jesse.”

“And you think the people who microchipped you like a stray dog are your best bet?” Reese challenged.

Collier flinched—but then huffed with a smile. “You guys keep giving me things to think hard about.”

“Good,” said Reese as Cheyenne stood. “Here’s one more: if we didn’t believe you could be reasoned with, we wouldn’t have saved your life.”

Collier saluted with his coffee cup and a rueful smile, drained the cup, and put it back on the tray before Cheyenne picked it up and left the room with Reese.

“Think he will?” Cheyenne asked quietly as Reese started washing Collier’s dishes.

“Will what?” Reese returned.

“Change his mind, maybe work with us.”

Reese shook his head a little. “Hard to say. He’ll think about it, at least, but… you can’t reason someone out of a position he wasn’t reasoned into.”

Cheyenne conceded the point with a tilt of his head and picked up a towel to dry.

* * *

After that, life fell back into an easier pattern for the next two weeks, with Mr. Finch watching over Root at the library and Sam, Reese, and Cheyenne taking turns assisting Collier at the safe house. Sam wanted Collier walking at least as far as the privy by the end of the first day, but until he could get the hang of balancing all his weight on his good leg and one crutch, he did need help. The fact that Reese and Cheyenne were willing to give that help without comment seemed to give Collier yet more to chew on, although he kept his conversations with them on lighter subjects than before. For her part, Miss Carter reported that Laskey had found HR stockpiling millions of dollars, but neither of them had learned why or come up with a new way to send word to Yogorov that Simmons was targeting Russian businesses for harsher protection measures.

No sooner had Sam and Cheyenne agreed that Collier was able to fend for himself everywhere except in the kitchen, though, than Mr. Finch needed Sam and Reese to help him with the case of a snake-oil salesman posing as a “hypnotherapist” (whatever that meant). Hayden Price was swindling virtually everyone in his life except his girlfriend, which meant—if the Mavericks’ record with Samantha Crawford and Modesty Blaine were anything to go by—that his girlfriend was bound to be swindling him somehow. So Cheyenne was just as happy to look after Collier while Sam and Reese looked after Price… at least until the third day of the case, when Reese, following Price, and Miss Carter, following Laskey, met up outside an auction house frequented by one of Price’s victims and discovered they were on the same trail.

“They call him ‘the Swede,’” Miss Carter explained when she called Cheyenne that evening. “His real name’s Sven Vanger, and he’s an antique dealer—who’s apparently laundering money for HR. Simmons and Terney told Laskey to kill Vanger after he does one last job for them tomorrow.”

Cheyenne frowned. “You think Price might be after HR’s money?”

“That’s what it looks like, but we don’t know _how_ yet.” She sighed. “Can you leave Collier for a few hours tomorrow morning?”

“If not, Mr. Finch can probably sit with him. Why?”

“I’m meeting a contact to find out more about the money laundering… but my contact never gives information for nothing, and this time his price is that he wants to meet you.”

He had a sneaking suspicion about the identity of this contact and wasn’t sure he wanted to meet the fellow—but neither did he want her going to the meeting alone. “I’ll tell Mr. Finch you need backup.”

“Thanks, Cheyenne,” she said with an audible smile and told him where and when to meet her. “Be sure to wait behind the building,” she cautioned. “I’ll have Laskey with me.”

“Got it.”

“If you get there early and someone challenges you, tell ’em you’re supposed to meet me there. If they don’t recognize the name Jim Merritt, they’ll recognize mine.”

“Fine.” Then something prompted him to ask, “Is everything all right, Miss Carter?”

She sighed again. “I’m just… I’m tired, you know? I’m ready for all this to be _over_. Quinn called me to meet him for coffee this morning, and… it was all I could do not to let on that I know.”

Truth be told, he was tired of it all, too, and he wanted to go _home_. Kind as his new friends were, he’d give anything to see Tom Brewster, Bronco Layne, and his other old friends again. Besides, if anyone could talk sense into Collier, it would be quick-witted, tenderhearted Tom.

But all Cheyenne said aloud was, “Maybe we’ll have somethin’ to go on this time tomorrow.”

“I sure hope so,” said Miss Carter.

After they said their good nights, Cheyenne called Mr. Finch, who was glad to have a reason to avoid Price for the morning. “HR sent a hit team to shoot up his office,” Mr. Finch reported, “but even _that_ has not convinced him to level with us completely. At least Collier has done us that courtesy.”

“Where’s Price now?” Cheyenne asked.

“At one of our other safe houses. I wouldn’t have wanted him to know about that one, even without Collier there. But he’ll be safe enough with Mr. Reese and Miss Shaw guarding him.”

So everything was arranged, and the next morning, Cheyenne rose early, consulted his maps one last time, and ventured out to brave the subways and buses to reach the meeting site. He arrived about half an hour early, but before he could find a place to wait for Miss Carter out of sight, two thugs met him on the sidewalk.

“Who are you?” asked one of them.

“Jim Merritt,” Cheyenne replied. “I’m supposed to meet Joss Carter here, but I’m early.”

The thugs looked at each other and exchanged nods. “Text her,” said the second thug, who had a long scar below the corner of his right eye. “Tell her we’re takin’ you in to see the boss.”

“Mind if I call instead? I can’t get the hang o’ the keyboard on this thing,” Cheyenne admitted, brandishing his pocket telephone. The concept of the text message wasn’t too different from that of the telegram, but he had enough trouble trying to type on a typewriter or computer, let alone something as fiddly and sensitive as a touchscreen. Reese, Fusco, and Miss Carter had all assured him that it was a common problem.

“Put it on speaker,” the second thug ordered.

Cheyenne dialed first and then turned on the speakerphone.

“Talk fast,” Miss Carter answered, and the thugs seemed to recognize her voice.

“It’s me,” Cheyenne replied. “I’m here early. They’re takin’ me inside.”

“All right.” She didn’t sound pleased, but whether she knew the telephone was in speaker mode or not, they both knew it wouldn’t be wise for him to refuse. “I’ll see you soon.” And she hung up.

Apparently satisfied, the thugs ushered Cheyenne in the building’s front door and down a dimly-lit staircase to an equally dimly-lit basement. The brightest light, almost like a spotlight, shone over a long table in the center of the room, at the head of which sat a balding, bespectacled man who looked up at Cheyenne with a bland, pleasant smile and didn’t look at all like the most dangerous man in New York.

“Welcome, Mr. Merritt,” said he. “I was hoping you’d be early and we’d have a chance to talk before Det. Carter arrives. I’m Carl Elias.”

“Elias,” Cheyenne returned with a nod. “Seems I’ve heard of you.”

“You know, it’s funny, but _I_ hadn’t heard of _you_ until this summer. I suspect our friends Harold and John had something to do with that.”

Cheyenne carefully said nothing.

Elias’ smile broadened in amusement. “You’re a cautious man. I like that. Please,” he said, gesturing to a seat, and the scar-faced thug pulled it out to let Cheyenne sit down. “Will you join me in a glass of wine? Brunello Di Montalcino—the finish is quite exquisite.”

“I’d just as soon have coffee, if it’s all the same to you.” Cheyenne never had liked the taste of wine; he’d drink whiskey or beer on occasion, but not often and never much. It didn’t seem wise to refuse Elias’ hospitality altogether, though.

“Oh, that’s right,” said Elias. “From what I’ve read, you are a… recovering alcoholic.”

“Yes, sir,” Cheyenne lied. Living with Charley Dolan, the drunk who’d taken him in the second time he’d left the People and who’d fought to get and stay sober for Cheyenne’s sake, had put Cheyenne off the idea of drinking to excess long ago. But the real Merritt had been a drunk, and that was part of the cover identity they’d established in this year as well.

Elias nodded. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black, please.”

Elias looked up at Scarface, who nodded and left. “So I hear you’re working with Det. Carter on this HR case,” Elias told Cheyenne then.

Cheyenne nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“How’s that going?”

“Slowly.”

Elias nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I offered more than once to take care of HR for her, permanently. She turned me down every time.”

“HR’s like a rattlesnake. Only sure way to kill it is to cut off its head. From what I heard, you didn’t know who the head was.”

“Do you?”

Cheyenne didn’t answer. Elias watched him for a moment, until Scarface returned with the coffee. Cheyenne nodded his thanks and drank cautiously; the coffee tasted good and didn’t seem to be drugged or poisoned, so he drank more deeply.

“Do you play chess, Mr. Merritt?” Elias asked then.

Cheyenne shrugged. “Sometimes.” He knew Elias wasn’t a man to be hustled, but he wasn’t going to admit to his actual skill level, either—not that he’d actively studied the game by reading books on the subject, but he had had plenty of practice.

Scarface brought over a chess set as Elias said, “I haven’t had a good game since the last time I saw Harold back in April. Frankly, I’m surprised Det. Carter has managed to avoid telling them about me this long. I can only assume she’s embarrassed to admit to our deal.”

Cheyenne frowned. “Deal?”

Elias raised his eyebrows and began setting up the black chessmen at his end of the board. “Didn’t she tell you? She saved my life. Then we agreed she’d let me go as long as Anthony”—here he gestured to Scarface—“and I keep a low profile. Hence my new… palatial surroundings.”

“Pretty ironic, considering,” said Scar—er, Anthony.

“Considerin’ what?” Cheyenne asked, setting up the white chessmen.

Elias placed his last piece and looked up. “Once upon a time, I tried to kill her.”

Cheyenne looked up at him sharply.

“I kidnapped her son, too. John rescued him. If I’d known then what I know now….” Elias shook his head. “Then again, maybe it’s all for the best. Going to prison was one of the best things that ever happened to me, _and_ John actually needed me there about this time last year.”

Cheyenne didn’t know what it said about Elias’ life that prison was one of the _best_ parts of it, but he didn’t comment. He simply finished setting up, took another drink of coffee, and made his first move. Elias answered with a move Cheyenne hadn’t seen in a while, so it took him a moment to remember the best strategy to counter with.[2] When he did make his second move, Elias hummed thoughtfully and took time to consider his own strategy. Unsurprisingly, Elias was an aggressive player, but so was Cheyenne, and each side was soon down several major pieces.

“Very interesting, Mr. Merritt,” Elias said as they chased each other around the board. “You play exactly like I’d expect someone from the nineteenth century to play… someone like your character from that play that failed—what was his name, Cheyenne Bodie?”

“Guess you could say I’m a method actor,” Cheyenne replied and captured another piece.

Elias chuckled and knocked over his king, conceding the game. “You’ve got me in three moves. Care for another?”

Cheyenne checked his watch and found they still had some time before Miss Carter was due to arrive. “Why not?”

They reset the board and began again. But this time, it quickly became apparent that Elias was playing not as himself but as Quinn, casting Cheyenne in the role of Mr. Finch and his team. Cheyenne didn’t say anything, but after he’d captured several pawns, he put one of them back on his own front rank, representing Laskey.

Elias looked up at him, eyebrows raised. “Is that so?”

“Your move,” said Cheyenne.

“Well, the most obvious move is….” Elias moved a bishop to threaten the Laskey pawn; Cheyenne suspected that was supposed to be Terney, but he wasn’t sure. It would make sense if Quinn were the black king and Simmons the black queen, but Cheyenne didn’t know if Terney had equals at his level of HR. “But of course that pawn is protected by this rook,” Elias continued, shifting one of Cheyenne’s rooks, clearly representing Miss Carter, to cover that square and threaten the black king at the same time. “If things remain as they are, the bishop takes the pawn and the rook takes the bishop. Question is whether white thinks that’s an acceptable exchange of material.”

Cheyenne considered the board. “Now supposin’….” He moved a knight, standing for himself, into a position that covered the pawn and threatened the bishop. “Does that take this bishop off the board, or can I have three bishops?”

“Hm. That depends. I happen to know this bishop has a family—I heard him beg for his life once. With the threat from both the rook and the knight… you might have three bishops, at least for a move or two. I’d take him off the board after that, though how you’d do that is probably different from the way I would.” Elias looked up at Cheyenne again. “Of course, you realize we really ought to be doing this with more players.”

“At least four?” Cheyenne asked knowingly.

Elias smiled. “Well, red and black are pretty tough to distinguish right now, and green’s mostly sitting it out on the sideline.”

“White’s been lookin’ for a way to turn red an’ black against each other.” Cheyenne pointed to the Terney bishop. “Would this be the piece to use?”

Elias leaned back and considered. “Better than the pawn,” he finally stated, “but not in isolation. You’d need some other pressure on both red and black, and that might be a reason for green to enter the game.”

Cheyenne was still pondering that when Miss Carter arrived to ask Elias about Vanger and the money laundering. Elias succeeded in pressuring her into tasting the wine—to her credit, she did no more than taste, although she seemed to agree with him that it was good—and explained that the laundered money was a kickback from the Bratva to HR in exchange for ignoring Yogorov’s escape from prison. The money would be delivered to Vanger, who’d deposit it in his own accounts before receiving separate instructions as to which lot to buy at the auction house that day. The purchased item, sold by someone working for HR, would be an overpriced fake.

“So if your con man thinks he can just swoop in and take a piece of HR’s business,” Elias concluded, “he’d better watch his back.”

“In more ways than one,” Cheyenne murmured as Elias took a drink of wine.

Miss Carter frowned. “How do you mean?”

“His girl.” Cheyenne shook his head. “It’s just a hunch, but… I know a woman who swindled a professional gambler out of $16,000 by insistin’ they play five-card stud accordin’ to Hoyle an’ then pullin’ some rule out o’ Hoyle’s book that none o’ the other players had ever heard of that meant his winnin’ hand wasn’t allowed.[3] Won’t surprise me if Price gets bit the same way.”

“ _Cherchez la femme_ ,” Elias agreed. “‘The female of the species is more deadly than the male’—and in this case, that could be literal, unless our friends intervene.”

“Well, we’ll pass that along,” said Miss Carter, nodding to Cheyenne, and they stood at the same time. “Thanks for your time,” she told Elias.

“My pleasure,” Elias returned with a smile. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Merritt.”

Cheyenne nodded, and as Miss Carter turned to leave, he started to follow.

He was almost to the door when Elias called after him, “Oh, by the way, Mr. Merritt….”

Cheyenne paused and looked back.

“Keep an eye on that rook, will you? I don’t want anyone else making the same mistake I made.”

“Neither do I,” said Cheyenne and left.

“What was that all about?” Miss Carter asked when he caught up with her.

Cheyenne shook his head. “Chess problem. Nothin’ to worry about.”

She smiled like she didn’t believe him but wasn’t going to press the issue.

“Need me to come with you to talk to Vanger?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll call Fusco this time—we’ll need to stage Vanger’s death to get him out of town and get Laskey off the hook, and Fusco’s better at that than you are. But I might need you tomorrow. Gonna have Laskey shadow Simmons for me, and we might need some backup when we meet afterward to get his intel.”

He nodded. “Just let me know when an’ where.”

“I can pick you up.”

He nodded again, and they went their separate ways, although they kept in touch by phone until the next evening. Price, it turned out, had altered an email with Vanger’s instructions for the day, telling him to bid on a genuine autographed baseball instead of the phony item being sold by HR. Price had then sent a boy to buy the ball from Vanger for almost nothing, escaped from Reese’s custody, and bought a ball from the boy at a slight profit—but Price’s girl had gotten to the boy first, so the ball Price bought was phony. While Sam and Reese stopped Terney and his HR thugs from killing Price the next morning, the girl escaped from everyone and got away with the real ball.

“If you wanna say ‘I told you so,’” Reese told Cheyenne at the safe house that evening, “go right ahead.”

Cheyenne shook his head, but he was smiling. “I just know too many of Bret Maverick’s stories to think this one had any shot at a real happy endin’ for Price.”

“HR’s startin’ to come unglued over this,” added Miss Carter, who’d come to collect Cheyenne. “Quinn’s probably puttin’ the heat on Simmons, ’cause I just heard Simmons threaten to kill Terney if he an’ Laskey don’t come up with the ball. Sounds like Terney’s gettin’ tired of takin’ orders from Simmons, too.”

“Four million dollars is an expensive mistake,” Reese noted.

“I used to like Terney, until he tried to shoot me in the back and then hung me out to dry with IAB. Now?” Miss Carter shook her head. “I really wouldn’t care if Simmons does kill him—but I can’t let them kill Laskey, not now, not when he’s just startin’ to get his head straight.”

Cheyenne nodded and grabbed his suitcoat, remembering his chess match with Elias. “Let’s go make sure that won’t happen.”

It was just after 11 when Cheyenne and Miss Carter arrived at Laskey’s apartment building, where Laskey had asked Miss Carter to meet him in front of the mail room. There was an open door just before the wall of mailboxes, so Cheyenne concealed himself there and waited until Laskey arrived and showed Miss Carter the photos he’d taken.

Miss Carter had just warned Laskey that the situation was about to heat up when Terney arrived, gun in hand, and taunted Laskey about having been weak enough for Miss Carter to turn him. Miss Carter aimed her gun at Terney, and Cheyenne silently drew his own, waiting for the right moment to break the Mexican standoff.

“So let me tell you how the world works now, kid,” Terney continued, stopping conveniently in front of the door behind which Cheyenne was hiding. “We kill her, or they kill us.”

“That decision is gonna be your last, Terney,” Miss Carter stated as Cheyenne took careful aim.

And then, before Laskey could go for his gun and ruin everything, Cheyenne put a bullet straight through Terney’s right wrist. Terney’s hand spasmed, and his gun fired before it flew out of his hand; but Cheyenne’s shot had done its job, and Terney’s went harmlessly into the wall beyond Laskey. Then Terney’s gun hit the ground and went off again, and Laskey cried out and dropped to one knee, clutching his left leg. Cheyenne stepped out of his hiding place to keep Terney covered while Miss Carter holstered her gun and ripped open Laskey’s trouser leg to check his wound.

For his part, Terney held his bleeding wrist and gaped at Cheyenne. “Merritt!”

“Surprised to see me, Terney?” Cheyenne asked.

Terney’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he begged, “Please… I got a family.”

Cheyenne was unmoved. “Shoulda thought of that ’fore you got mixed up with HR.”

“You’re okay,” Miss Carter told Laskey and came over to take Terney’s tie. “You’re okay. You’re gonna need stitches, but it’s just a graze. Here, tie this around it while I call a friend to come take care of it.”

“Thank you,” Laskey squeaked.

“Look,” pleaded Terney, still looking at Cheyenne, “I didn’t come here to kill Carter or the kid, honest. Simmons wants me and the kid to find the real ball. He’s gonna kill us if we don’t come up with it.”

“That’s too bad,” Cheyenne replied. “The girl double-crossed Price and skipped town with the real ball. She’s long gone.”

Terney closed his eyes in defeat. “Then go ahead and kill me now.”

“I don’t think so,” said Miss Carter, collecting the pictures Laskey had dropped. “The way I see it, you owe me—and right now? I’m gonna collect.”

Terney opened his eyes and looked at her in mingled pain and worry. “Collect how?”

Miss Carter held out a hand to Cheyenne, who guessed her plan and passed her his handkerchief in exchange for the pictures. “We’re gonna take you to the hospital,” she said, shaking out the handkerchief and using it to bandage Terney’s wrist. “And while you’re there, you’re gonna deliver a message for me.”

Terney looked even more worried. “A message? To Simmons?”

“Nope. To Peter Yogorov.”

Terney’s eyes widened.

Miss Carter turned to bid good night to Laskey, who was resting on a nearby couch while he waited for Sam. Then Cheyenne and Miss Carter hustled Terney out to her car and explained the plan on the way to the hospital. Unsurprisingly, Terney agreed; what did surprise Cheyenne was how eager Terney was to go through with it.

When Cheyenne mentioned it, Terney shook his head. “Simmons has been treating me like a rookie all day. I mean, it’s been bad enough taking orders from a uni, but today he really went too far. You give me a chance to save my life, my wife, and my daughters _and_ get back at Simmons? Hell yeah, I’m gonna take it.”

“We’re not doin’ it for you, Terney,” Miss Carter said flatly.

Terney sighed. “I know this is too little, too late, Carter, but for what it’s worth… I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what part? Tryin’ to shoot me in the back? Lyin’ to IAB? Threatening Fusco? Threatening Taylor? Tryin’ to shoot us tonight?!”

“All of it! All right? All of it!”

Miss Carter shook her head. “Sorry won’t bring back Szymanski and Cal.”

It was a moment before Terney replied quietly, “I know. Like I said.”

Another moment passed before Miss Carter said, “Better make that call.”

“Yeah.” Terney dug his telephone out of his pocket with his left hand and called Yogorov to meet him at the emergency room.

At the hospital, Miss Carter dropped Terney off at the emergency room door, then had Cheyenne use her telephone to eavesdrop on Terney while she found a place to park out of sight. Terney had to turn his telephone off while he underwent emergency surgery to stabilize the broken bones and stop the bleeding, but Cheyenne and Miss Carter were still able to hear when Yogorov arrived at Terney’s bedside.

“Oh, thank God!” Terney sighed when he saw his visitor. “Yogorov, you gotta help me.”

“What happened to you?” asked a voice Cheyenne had heard only once before, on the tape Gen Zhirova had made of HR’s meeting with the Bratva about their joint venture.

“Simmons.”

“Simmons?!”

“He’s losin’ it. Ever since we lost that girl with the tapes—”

“I did _not_ order her to spy on that meeting!”

“I know that—now. But Simmons still believes you did. Then there was that mess with Petrovitch goin’ after Merritt without orders.”

“That wasn’t my fault, either.”

“And neither was old man Morozov’s skimmin’ money from his protection payment. The point is, Simmons has gotten twitchy about you guys in particular, and he’s gettin’ twitchy about everything in general. He’s losin’ control of HR, and since the boss is on _his_ back about it, he’s gettin’ on ours. And now, after this thing with the Swede….”

“Whoa, whoa, what thing with the Swede?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“No, what happened?”

Terney sighed. “He got conned by his therapist, who got conned by his girlfriend, who just skipped town with a real autographed baseball worth $4.4 million of _our money_. Even if I knew where she went, she’s probably already sold it by now. Simmons is gonna _kill_ me.”

“So what,” Yogorov asked, “you want me to cough up another $4 million?”

“No, just… get me and my family out of town. Please. Anywhere. I don’t even care if you send us to Russia. Just get us outta here.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I know enough to put you back inside for the rest of your life and make sure your brother never sees the outside again.”

Before Yogorov could reply, Miss Carter reached over and disconnected her telephone from Terney’s.

“Don’t you wanna hear the rest?” Cheyenne asked as she started the car.

“I don’t care,” Miss Carter stated. “Whatever happens next is on Yogorov’s head. I’ve already got what I need to turn him in to the Feds. And whether he saves Terney or kills him, it’ll look bad to Simmons and Quinn.”

Cheyenne said nothing, only thought again of his chess match with Elias. He wondered whether Elias would have foreseen the red king being the one to decide the black bishop’s fate… and what all the players’ next moves would be.

* * *

[1] Paraphrased from _Cheyenne_ 5.3 “Road to Three Graves”

[2] I didn’t want to get too far off in the weeds describing this game, especially since I’m not a student of chess myself; but for those who might be curious, I’m picturing Elias (appropriately enough) using the Sicilian Defense, which fell out of favor in the 1870s but was revived after World War II.

[3] _Maverick_ 1.3 “According to Hoyle” (the woman in question being Samantha Crawford)


	10. The Calm Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m doing an “it’s AU anyway” handwave in this chapter and the next because while the direct rail line from Long Island City to Jamaica Station that goes through Forest Park was apparently open in November 2013, the Wayback Machine didn’t capture a schedule for that line, which suggests it was for freight only. I therefore ask any New Yorkers who know differently to kindly cut me a break.

“Hey, kid,” Simmons’ voice called as Mike Laskey limped past an alley on his way to the coffee cart the next morning. “C’mere.”

_Here we go_ , Mike thought and steeled himself as he turned aside and limped over to where Simmons was waiting for him.

Simmons frowned, noticing the way Mike was walking. “What happened to you?”

“Oh, I fell last night, cut my leg,” Mike lied. “I had a friend stitch it up for me. She says I’ll be fine on patrol—y’know, as long as nothing crazy happens.”

Simmons chuckled. “Kid, you don’t know from crazy.”

Mike was pretty sure the last seventy-two hours qualified: being ordered to kill a man, having his partner fake the murder for him, being ordered to kill a _girl_ , having his partner knock him out with one punch to make it look good, having some chick he’d never seen before field-strip his weapon like it was nothing, having that same chick turn up at thirty minutes to midnight to stitch up a gunshot graze in his leg like it was nothing. But craziest of all had been Merritt—“dear boy, I’m a method actor,” fluent-in-five-Native-languages, lost-his-wallet-in-a-poker-game, definitely-not-the-Suit James Thornton Merritt—stepping out of the shadows with a Desert Eagle to _save Mike’s life_. Mike didn’t know if _Carter_ could have made that shot; he wasn’t that good or fast himself. He’d have thought the whole thing was a dream if he hadn’t woken up with five stitches in his leg. He couldn’t say any of that to Simmons, though, so he only smiled.

“Have you seen Terney?” Simmons asked.

Mike shrugged and shook his head. “No, sir, not since we left the auction house yesterday.”

“He didn’t come by your place last night?”

“No, sir.”

Simmons swore. “I told him I wanted the two of you to find that baseball.”

“He never arrived.”

Simmons swore again.

Hesitantly, mostly because he hadn’t discussed this idea with Carter, Mike suggested, “Maybe he found the real ball and decided to keep it for himself.”

Simmons stared at him like he’d just grown a third head. “ _Terney?!_ I’ve known him since we went through the Academy!”

“That much money could be a temptation to anyone. And you’re the one who taught me the difference between knowing someone and trusting them.”

Simmons was still staring at Mike when his phone rang. He answered, listened a moment, and said, “You’re kidding. When?” He listened some more, with the occasional “Uh-huh” to show he was still there, and finally swore bitterly. “Find him,” he ordered, hung up, and looked at Mike again. “Looks like you could be right, Laskey. Terney showed up at Bellevue last night with a .50-caliber hole in his wrist, but he didn’t call any of us. He called Peter Yogorov—and told him _I_ shot him.”

Mike shook his head. “That’s crazy, boss.”

“You’re tellin’ me.” Simmons shook his head in turn. “All right, get lost. And take care of that leg, huh?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mike and went on his way. Fortunately, the line at the coffee cart was short, and Carter was waiting just around the corner, so it wasn’t long until Mike was sinking into his seat in the patrol car with a groan and handing Carter her coffee.

“Heard what you said to Simmons,” she said as he shut his door.

He looked at her. “Yeah? How’d I do?”

She smiled. “Perfect.”

He smiled back and relaxed.

“And look what I found taped to my door this morning.” She handed him a jewel case with a CD in it labeled _FOR CARTER_ in large block letters.

He frowned. “Is that Det. Terney’s handwriting?”

“Yep. It’s a full videotaped confession. I don’t know what kind of a deal he made with Yogorov last night, but it looks like after he left the hospital, he took a laptop into the conference room at the Eighth and recorded it there.” She took the CD back and hid it in the glovebox. “The most important thing is, he names the head of HR, so that gives me enough to bring the whole rotten bunch down.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “So what happens now?”

“Now we have our coffee and get on with our shift. And tonight?” She put the car in gear. “We have a council of war.”

* * *

Cheyenne had Reese pick him up at eight that evening for the strategy meeting, which took place at the second safe house. Mr. Finch didn’t want Collier to overhear anything he shouldn’t, and Reese and Cheyenne had agreed. Laskey seemed to be surprised by just how many friends Miss Carter had—the team numbered seven in all, counting Miss Carter but not counting Miss Morgan, Root, or Elias, none of whom were there—but while that was better than her taking on all of HR and the Bratva alone, Cheyenne would still have felt more at ease with larger numbers on their side. Still, as Reese pointed out, overwhelming numbers didn’t always carry the day, and Miss Carter planned to have the FBI round up the rank-and-file members of each organization. Quinn was the one man she wanted to arrest personally; if they could get Simmons at the same time, so much the better.

The idea was to set a trap—or rather, a counter-trap—for Quinn by luring him out when Miss Carter went to a judge after hours to get a warrant for his arrest. Laskey, by unanimous agreement, was assigned to guard Collier at the safe house. Mr. Finch and Bear would naturally be at the library, recording any last incriminating evidence and overseeing the operation. The main assault would come from Miss Carter, Reese, and Cheyenne; Fusco and Shaw were to provide backup once the team started escorting Quinn to the federal building downtown to place him in FBI custody. Miss Morgan had already provided Miss Carter with a list of judges suspected to be on HR’s payroll, and Miss Carter had selected one, named Andrew Monahan, who was most likely to alert Quinn when she called and to allow HR to set a trap for her. The main problem was that Monahan lived in Queens. While the distance to Manhattan wasn’t insurmountable, the area was too built up for a quick getaway, and then there was the problem of crossing the Hudson River to Manhattan Island.

“There’s really only two options to get across here,” Fusco pointed out, “take a train or cross a bridge. The minute word gets out that you guys’ve got Quinn, HR’s gonna throw up checkpoints on every bridge and have men checkin’ every train station between Monahan’s house and Manhattan.”

Cheyenne raised an eyebrow. “ _Only_ two options?”

“We can’t fly in,” said Reese. “It’s illegal to land a helicopter in Manhattan, and even if we tried an ultralight, they’d have someone watching every dirt strip where we could possibly land.”

“I wasn’t thinkin’ of flyin’.” In fact, Cheyenne usually forgot that was possible these days; helicopters still took him by surprise.

“What’s left?”

Cheyenne put his finger on the map squarely in the middle of Jamaica Bay. “A boat.”

Fusco chuckled. “That’s a lotta open ground to cover there, Cowboy.”

“Not as much as you’d think.” Cheyenne backed up to the judge’s house. “For one thing, they’ll be expectin’ us to go straight toward Manhattan, not away from it. So the first step is gettin’ a few streets away an’ then headin’ down here to Forest Park.”

Sobering, Fusco hummed thoughtfully. “Hafta find a way across Jackie Robinson Parkway, but once you do, that tree cover’s pretty solid.”

“Could we get horses through there?”

“Yeah, probably, if you really want to. There’s walkin’ trails. But it’s no good tryin’ to get _outta_ the park on horseback.”

“I wasn’t figurin’ on it.” Cheyenne pointed next to a rail line that crossed the park. “If we time it right, we should be able to hop a train here that’ll take us toward Jamaica Station.”

“Toward, not to?” Miss Carter asked.

“That’s right.” Cheyenne followed the line in that direction with his finger but stopped where it crossed Jamaica Avenue. “The train should start slowin’ down about here, give us a chance to jump off.”

“Hey, I know that corner,” Laskey chimed in. “There’s a used car lot just down the embankment from the tracks.”

Sam brightened. “So if we stash a car there earlier in the day….”

Reese put his finger down next to Cheyenne’s and traced the next leg. “Lefferts to Conduit to Cohancy to 157th is our fastest route to a marina.”

Cheyenne picked up from Howard Beach. “We sail around thisaway and up to the far side o’ Battery Park—say, the North Cove Marina. We can walk the rest in a quarter of an hour.”

“It sounds good in principle,” said Miss Carter. “But you’re assuming they’ll all be staked out in the train stations and subway stations and along the bridges even when we don’t show up after a couple of hours. That may not work if they find my car in the park or get extra manpower on the streets.”

Reese sighed. “Or if they send helicopters while we’re still in open water. We’ll need some way to jam all their communications.”

“That won’t be so easy,” said Fusco. “After the last two times you guys pulled that trick, the department’s been takin’ steps to harden its communications platforms to stop you from doin’ it again.”

“And I can’t justify taking all emergency bands down for as long as it might take to get Quinn to the federal building,” Mr. Finch added. “Too many innocent lives could be lost.”

“So you need someone who can selectively block HR,” Sam stated.

The room fell silent. Everyone but Laskey knew she meant Root, although of course neither Miss Carter nor Fusco knew why Sam would think Root could do such a thing—and Cheyenne wished _he_ didn’t know.

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question,” said Mr. Finch.

“I don’t trust her either,” Sam insisted, “but she may be our only option.”

“We are talkin’ about the crazy chick who kidnapped Glasses, right?” Fusco asked. “Didn’t she just kidnap you, too?”

Sam rolled her eyes. “You think I’ve forgotten that?!”

Mr. Finch shook his head. “Root is far too dangerous for me to even consider letting her help us.”

“I don’t trust her, either, sir,” said Cheyenne, deeply uneasy but still seeing Sam’s point. “But she may be the best bet we have of gettin’ things done the rest of us can’t handle.”

“Mr. Merritt—”

“You heard what she said the other night.”

Mr. Finch hesitated a moment before responding, “The analog interface is offline for maintenance.”

“There is only so much I can do in this situation. I’m a fast gun and a good scout, but I can’t jam radios.”

“Who else would we ask?” Reese wondered quietly. “Collier’s not a hacker. Neither is Elias. Greenfield’s in the wind. We _can’t_ trust Leon Tao, and he’s only useful with financial stuff anyway. So who’s left?”

“You wouldn’t have to let her go,” Sam pressed before Mr. Finch could come up with an answer. “Just lengthen her leash, like, a foot.”

Mr. Finch shook his head again. “I’m sorry. There has to be another way.”

“Finch, we’re on the razor’s edge with this one,” said Reese. “One slip, and we could _all_ get killed. Every other option is worse—we’ve just gone over all of them. You know what I think of Root after what she did to you, but if she can give us that lifeline, just this once… we’ve worked with Elias with less cause.”

“That hasn’t always gone well for us, Mr. Reese.”

“He saved my life in Rikers.”

Cheyenne stole a glance at Laskey, who was sitting next to him. The poor kid looked about like Cheyenne had felt the night the team had met with Miss Morgan: somewhere between bewildered and spooked. It was a good thing Laskey didn’t know about the Machine, or Collier might recruit him into Vigilance without even trying.

“She’s still a fruitcake,” Fusco grumbled.

“No one’s disputin’ that,” said Cheyenne.

“No,” Miss Carter agreed thoughtfully. “But sometimes when you need all hands on deck… it means you have to let some guys out of the brig until the storm’s over.”

Mr. Finch looked over the map again and studied the pictures of the house and its surroundings. Then he sighed heavily. “I will… consider what terms to present to her tomorrow.”

The other long-term members of the team looked at each other in mingled relief, annoyance, and grim determination. It felt an awful lot like the times Cheyenne had had no choice but to trust an outlaw with his life. At least this time, he wasn’t in the bind alone—and neither was Miss Carter.

Laskey leaned toward Cheyenne and murmured, “I don’t understand what just happened.”

“I hope you never do,” Cheyenne murmured back.

* * *

The next morning, Cheyenne was startled to be woken before dawn by a call from Reese. “Finch wants us at the library at 9,” Reese stated. “I’ll pick you up at 7:30.”

Cheyenne frowned at his alarm clock, which stubbornly insisted that it was a quarter to 7. It shouldn’t take an hour and a half to get from his apartment to the library, even with traffic. “Why so early?”

“Need to make a couple stops on our way.”

Cheyenne sighed. “Is it a case? I was plannin’ to do my washin’ today.” He should have done it that Monday, of course, but the Price case had put paid to that plan—he couldn’t very well have taken his wash to the safe house, after all—and now he was out of white shirts and clean handkerchiefs, although he still had bandanas.

“No, casual’s fine,” Reese replied, understanding the real question. “I think he wants to go over the plan again before he talks to Root.”

And that probably meant Mr. Finch wanted not only to be sure Root was their only option but also to have Cheyenne and Reese for backup as well as moral support. Cheyenne would need his guns, then, despite not wearing the suit. His new buckskin jacket should hide the shoulder holster well enough.

He sighed and got up. “All right. See you then.”

Breakfast and a shower got Cheyenne awake enough to hit the trail, although he was definitely going to need more coffee before facing Root. He dressed and threw on his boot holster, shoulder holster, and belt with knife sheath; then he reached for his gun belt—and stopped himself with a heavy sigh. For all the ways he’d gotten used to this year, the habits of his entire adult life died hard, and he missed his old life, his old friends, his horse.

He wanted to go home.

It must have still been showing when Reese met him at the curb, precisely on time, because no sooner had Cheyenne gotten in the car than Reese asked, “Problems?”

“Homesick,” Cheyenne admitted. “Ironic for someone who ain’t lived in one place for this long but once or twice in all his life, but still.”

Reese nodded. “Given any thought to what sort of party favors you want to bring to this shivaree we’re planning?”

Cheyenne shook his head. “Not yet.”

“No reason you can’t take a Winchester and your revolver.”

Cheyenne blinked. “Really?”

Reese shrugged. “We’re going in together. No reason to keep up the pretense.”

“Well, a Winchester might be overkill inside a house. Might be harder to handle gettin’ on an’ off the train, too. But I might just wear my revolver, thanks.”

“About the train: I don’t think horses would gain us any speed in getting to the tracks. I looked at aerial photos last night, and Fusco’s right—about the only way through the trees other than on foot is on the walking trails, which a cop trained in helicopter search would be able to follow pretty easily. Our best bet’s sticking to the points where the trees are thickest, which is just where a horse can’t go. And there’s the problem of what we’d do with the horses once we reached the track.”

“That’s a good point.” Cheyenne rubbed wearily at his forehead, unsure whether he really had a headache coming on or if it was just lack of coffee. He’d had one cup with breakfast, but that clearly hadn’t been enough.

“The other problem is convincing Quinn to make the jumps. Getting off, we can just push him, but getting on while it’s at speed….”

“Are there any bridges we could jump from?”

“Ooh. Maybe. I’ll look. Of course, odds are that they’re clear at the other end of the park.”

“If I remember the scale right, though, it’s no more’n a mile from Monahan’s house. We should be able to manage that.”

“The snag with jumping down onto the train is….”

“Getting inside,” they chorused.

“Or at least gettin’ down between cars,” Cheyenne qualified.

Reese nodded. “We’ll have to check schedules, find out when a train bound for Jamaica Station comes through there and whether it’s likely to be passenger or freight.”

“Freight might be safer.”

“They may not be old-fashioned boxcars, though. Even modern boxcars don’t have platforms at the ends, and a tanker or flatcar could be tricky to hold onto, even for a short stretch.”

Cheyenne grimaced. “I don’t suppose Mr. Finch would spring for a private train.”

Reese laughed. “Wouldn’t hurt to ask! I think he’s already working on sourcing a car to sell to the used car lot—old enough that it won’t look suspicious and won’t have GPS but nice enough that it won’t be a surprise when we ‘steal’ it. ’Course, I don’t mind just hotwiring one of the cars already on the lot, but this way we’ll know what antitheft devices the car has and won’t have to waste time with the hotwiring.”

Cheyenne still wasn’t comfortable with that kind of casual theft, even for a short drive, so he said nothing.

“So,” Reese continued after a pause. “What did Root have to say the other night?”

Cheyenne frowned at the change of subject. “Sorry?”

“You said something to Finch last night about his having heard what Root said. But she didn’t say anything about this mission that Shaw and I heard.”

“Oh.” Cheyenne sighed. “The Machine asked me to save Miss Carter ’cause the ‘other available assets’ won’t be enough, an’ it said… if she dies, Samaritan will rise.”

Reese swore quietly.

“Dunno how it reckons that or why it thinks my gun can make that much of a difference, but that’s what Root said it was tellin’ her.”

“And it’s never wrong. What’d you say?”

“That I’d do it because she’s my friend, not because it asked me to.”

Reese looked a little relieved at that answer, but he only nodded slowly and found a place to park. “Our first stop’s over there,” he stated, nodding toward a line of trees a block or two away. “There’s a coffee cart in the park—and something I need to show you.”

Somewhat surprised, Cheyenne got out at the same time Reese did and held his jacket close against the early morning sea breeze as he followed Reese into the park. There weren’t many people roaming its paths, which was hardly surprising for a Saturday morning this late in the year; but as Cheyenne and Reese approached the coffee cart, Cheyenne’s eye was caught by a petite red-haired woman who was setting up a French easel near the fountain in the center of the park.

“Don’t watch her too closely,” Reese murmured and stepped up to the coffee cart to order coffee for himself and Cheyenne and a sencha green tea for Mr. Finch.

Cheyenne turned away from the artist to watch the coffee man fill the order and considered what he’d learned from that brief glance. The artist was about their age, he thought, pretty but not stunning, but she had an air of sweetness about her. Was it that, more than the unusual shade of her hair, that had drawn his attention? Or was it the simple fact that she’d chosen to paint outside on a cold morning like this? Well, regardless, Reese had clearly brought Cheyenne specially to see her, but there had to be some other reason why Reese didn’t want her to see them see her.

It wasn’t until the two men had their drinks and were walking back to the car that Reese explained softly, “Her name is Grace Hendricks. She’s Finch’s fiancée—but she thinks he died in the ferry bombing.”

Cheyenne shot him a sidelong look. “Why?”

“He knew the Feds would kill her if they had any reason to think she knew about the Machine. He keeps an eye on her and makes sure she gets enough work to get by, but it’s too dangerous for her to know he’s still alive.”

Cheyenne nodded slowly.

“That’s not why I wanted you to know about her, though,” Reese continued. “It’s about Root.”

“Root?” Cheyenne echoed, confused.

“The first time Root kidnapped Finch was traumatic enough. She shot Alicia Corwin in front of him and then made him watch as she tortured and killed Denton Weeks—they were two of the original eight who’d known about Northern Lights, and she was trying to find it. But the second time, to get Finch to cooperate… she threatened Grace.”

Cheyenne’s already low opinion of Root plummeted further.

“From what Finch said, Grace had no idea they were even in the park that afternoon,” Reese went on. “He kept Root from getting within shouting distance of her. But I thought you should know that part of his history with Root, in case you think he’s acting weird about her.”

“I didn’t particularly,” Cheyenne replied. “But that does explain some things. Does Sam know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll keep it that way.”

“Thanks.” Reese smiled a little. “That’s the _other_ reason I told you—I knew we could trust you.”

They were beyond the line of trees now, so it was safe for Cheyenne to glance back over his shoulder at the splash of red that was barely visible beside the fountain. “You care about her, too, don’t you?”

Reese’s smile broadened and softened at the same time. “I’ve spoken to her, once. She’s my best friend’s girl, and I have no plans to steal her, but… I dunno, I guess I get what he sees in her.” He punctuated that with a drink of coffee, but his eyes were sad. “Wish things were different so they could be together. Three years, and she’s still mourning for him and he’s still pining for her. I just wish I could do something about it.”

Cheyenne nodded. “And the Machine?”

Reese chuckled suddenly. “The way Finch tells it, the Machine set them up. It kept drawing his attention to her until he finally spoke to her.” He shook his head. “I don’t think it has emotions, but if it did, yeah, I’d say it likes her.”

Cheyenne waited until they were in the car and underway again to say, “Funny thing is, I wouldn’t have thought a man like Mr. Finch would fall for an artist.”

Reese chuckled again. “Sometimes it’s the opposites that attract. Sometimes it’s the similarities.”

“Like you and Miss Carter?”

Reese went quiet and still for a moment, probably considering the _We’re just friends_ defense.

“You don’t have to lie, y’know. I’m not jealous, and I’m not gonna give you grief over it like Sam would.”

Reese sighed resignedly. “How long have you known?”

“From the day I met you, when she was in your kitchen. I saw how you looked at each other. Saw the disappointment in your eyes when she said she had to leave so soon after she arrived, couldn’t stay to supper. I’ve done my share o’ courtin’ and stood up as best man at a fair few weddings… I know how a man looks at the woman he loves.”

Reese didn’t say anything, but his grip on the steering wheel tightened.

“If it helps any, I think she feels the same about you.”

“I… we… it’s not….”

“Not like you and Miss Morgan?”

Reese rolled his eyes. “Look, I don’t know what you think about Zoe—”

“I’m not aimin’ to pry,” Cheyenne interrupted. “If there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that you don’t treat ladies shamefully. But whatever you have with her, it’s not leadin’ to marriage, and I think you both know it.”

Reese deflated a little. “We faked it once. Had a number in the suburbs, had to pose as a married couple to avert suspicion. And… you’re right. We had fun, but it would never work out. If we tried it for real, we’d probably be divorced within a year.” Then he smiled wryly. “You should have seen the look on her face when I asked her, though. And the look Joss gave her when Zoe introduced herself as my wife….”

Cheyenne smiled. “I can imagine.”

Just then they arrived at their second stop, a bakery where Reese picked up a box of pastries, so it wasn’t until they were finally on their way to the library that Reese asked, “What’s your point about Joss?”

“Two points,” Cheyenne answered. “One, I don’t intend to come between the two of you, and I just thought I should say so ’fore any feelings get hurt.”

Reese raised an eyebrow. “Really? You think they might?”

“I’ve had too many friendships nigh on ruined ’cause the other fella thought I was after his girl. I don’t want that to happen here just ’cause I’ve been workin’ with Joss. I do care about her, and I want to help her win this fight. But there’s ways o’ carin’ that don’t lead to romance. And besides, I don’t belong here. You an’ Joss do.”

Reese nodded thoughtfully. “And the second reason?”

“I reckon you oughta speak to Joss ’fore it’s too late.”

“Too late? In what sense?”

“Look, even if we pull this off and we all come out unscathed, there’s still Vigilance an’ Decima an’ all the other risks that come with both your jobs. I know you both well enough by now to know neither one of you will give up those jobs. But do you really want to wait until one of you is mortally wounded to say how you feel?”

Reese winced.

“You’ve made that mistake before, haven’t you?” Cheyenne asked more gently.

“Yeah,” Reese admitted softly. “So has Joss.”

“Don’t make it again.”

“I’ll… I’ll give it some thought.” Reese parked in his usual spot for the final walk to the library, but after he shut off the engine, he sat for a moment and then smiled at Cheyenne. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Cheyenne replied with a nod, and they got out of the car together.

Inside, Bear met them on the landing of the floor on which the command center sat, but Mr. Finch was gazing wistfully at one of his computer monitors and seemed not to hear them approach. They were early, admittedly, but Cheyenne didn’t think that was the reason.

“Morning, Finch,” said Reese and set the pastries and tea on the desk.

“Good morning,” Mr. Finch murmured distractedly and took a drink of tea without looking away from the monitor, while Reese slipped a pastry to Bear. “She’s painting you, Mr. Bodie,” Mr. Finch added at a more conversational volume.

“Miss Hendricks?” Cheyenne asked, surprised. “I didn’t even know she’d seen me.”

“You are a hard man to miss,” Mr. Finch teased. But then his smile softened into a lovelorn one. “I’m glad, though. If it all goes wrong, or if… if you find your way home… we’ll have more left of you than just your music.” He paused. “I don’t think there’s anyone I’d trust to capture a person’s essence after so brief an encounter more than Grace.”

Cheyenne didn’t know quite what to say to that. Instead, he said, “For what it’s worth, sir… I hope things get better someday.”

“Thank you.” Then Mr. Finch took a deep breath and turned to face the other men. “I heard your conversation in the car about the trains. That addressed one of the questions I was going to raise, and I _can_ arrange for a freight shipment in a train of, say, six boxcars to be sent from Long Island City through Jamaica Station to Port Jefferson, with instructions to leave Long Island City only at my signal and to leave the doors on the… fifth boxcar open. The two of you and Det. Carter will have to work out how to get Quinn inside.” He helped himself to a chocolate-filled croissant (Cheyenne never could remember the French name for the thing).

“Hold that thought,” said Reese as he and Cheyenne each took a doughnut. “What if the shipment were sent from Port Jefferson to Long Island City earlier in the day and the boxcars were empty for the eastbound run?”

“Then all the doors could be left open,” Cheyenne agreed, “and it wouldn’t matter so much which car we land on. Would give us room to move around inside, too.”

Mr. Finch’s mouth was full, but he nodded. “I’ll see what can be arranged,” he said when he’d swallowed. “Of course, this is all partly contingent upon Det. Carter giving us advance notice of when she plans to move against Quinn.”

Reese tilted his head in acknowledgement and washed down his bite of doughnut with a drink of coffee. “I don’t think it’ll be long—a week, maybe, two at the outside. Losing first the baseball and then Terney seems to have rattled HR. Carter just has to find the right button to push.”

“I’ll get as many of the pieces in place now as I possibly can, but I’ll still need at least a day’s notice to redirect the shipment.”

Thus began an intensive strategy session in which every possible alternative was considered, every conceivable weakness unpicked and accounted for, every assumption challenged, and every way of not involving Root discussed. Cheyenne thought several times that the whole thing would be much simpler if they weren’t in New York City, but he kept that opinion to himself. The plain truth was that the plan would work reliably only if whoever Quinn had at the judge’s house and at the Real Time Crime Center couldn’t get word to the rest of HR and get helicopters airborne before the team reached the boat, and the only way to ensure that without threatening innocent lives who might need the honest lawmen and first responders in town… was to have Root unleash the Machine.

At Mr. Finch’s defeated sigh, Reese said, “Like we said last night, Finch. Every other option is worse.”

“I know, I know. I just… never wanted the Machine to be used this way.” Mr. Finch looked at his watch. “I need to take Root her lunch anyway. If you gentlemen would be so kind….”

“’Course,” said Cheyenne.

Assembling Root’s tray took only a few minutes, and the three men trooped down to her floor in grim silence. Root was reading when they arrived and looked up in surprise.

“Wow,” she said. “An armed escort. Are you sure that’s just food on that tray, Harold?”

Mr. Finch was not amused. At a look from him, Reese unlocked the cage door and stood aside to let Mr. Finch pass.

Root’s expression shifted to worry as Mr. Finch set the tray on the table. “Harold? What’s wrong? Is… this about what the Machine told you about Joss Carter?”

“Yes,” Mr. Finch admitted softly and met her eyes. “The danger still is not imminent, and we have a plan to deal with the threat, but… we will require your assistance.”

Root laid her book aside. “Yes. Yes, I’ll help. Just let me go.”

“I’m afraid it will be no more than a temporary release. You will not be permitted to leave this floor, and I will remain with you at all times to monitor your activities.”

She huffed. “ _Really?!_ Why ask me to participate if you still don’t trust me?!”

“If there were any alternative to your involvement, Miss Groves, rest assured that I would have found it. Your willingness to inflict harm on others, like Miss Shaw, makes you as dangerous as ever. But if we are to save Det. Carter, we will need your… unique abilities.”

“I thought _Cheyenne_ was—” Root broke off suddenly and looked toward the door of the cage, and Cheyenne wondered what she was hearing. Whatever it was, she listened for a moment and then sighed heavily. “Well. I suppose it’s better than nothing. A chance to stretch my legs a little more, maybe pick out a few of my own books….”

“But not escape,” Reese cautioned.

Root looked at him. “No. She wants me to stay here. Whatever her plan is to deal with Samaritan, I need to be here for the next step.” Then she looked away, frowning slightly as she listened again. “What a strange thing free will is,” she murmured. “She says she hadn’t even considered that escape route in her initial calculations, and even with all the variables she can control for in her simulations, she’s no more certain of the outcome than you are… but that may be the very thing that saves you.”

“Simulation ain’t prophecy,” Cheyenne noted.

“Even the very wise cannot see all ends,” Reese agreed.

“I know,” said Root, then smiled at them flirtatiously. “That’s why she likes you.”

Cheyenne had no earthly clue how to take that.

“Well,” said Mr. Finch and came back to the door. “We’ll let you get on with your lunch.”

As he left the cage, however, Root drifted toward the door herself, though she stayed inside. “She _does_ like you, Cheyenne,” she insisted. “I mean, obviously she loves Harold, and I’ve known all along that she likes John. But even when I was in Stoneridge, she used to tell me about you, this… man who doesn’t exist. You baffle her sometimes, but she likes you, and she wants to help.”

Cheyenne slammed the door of the cage shut in her face.

That didn’t deter her. “We’re not that different, you and I.”

“I’m nothin’ like you,” Cheyenne snapped and closed the padlock.

“Aside from the technological issues—”

“I’ve got my vices, but they don’t include murder an’ blackmail.”

That shut her up for the moment, and the three men turned to go.

“You’re needed at home, Cheyenne,” she called after them. “There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”

Cheyenne waited until they were on the stairs to look at Mr. Finch, who anticipated his question. “I think that will be all for today, gentlemen. Thank you for coming in.”

“Anything else you need while we’re out, Finch?” Reese asked.

The simple friendly question seemed to thaw Mr. Finch. The worse-than-usual stiffness went out of his gait, and he smiled gratefully up at Reese. “Thank you, Mr. Reese, but I truly do think we’ve finished our business for the day. But if you do hear anything new from Det. Carter….”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

Mr. Finch turned to Cheyenne next. “And thank you, Mr. Bodie.”

“I’ll be interested to hear how that paintin’ comes out,” Cheyenne replied.

Mr. Finch’s smile broadened. “I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”

Upstairs, Cheyenne and Reese collected their jackets and gave farewell scratches to Bear before they left. The drive back to Cheyenne’s apartment was fairly quiet, although when they arrived, Reese reminded Cheyenne to set his clocks back that night. (Cheyenne had never heard of Daylight Savings until that week, and while his friends had assured him that he wasn’t the only one who found the concept odd, it made even less sense to him as someone who’d grown up without clocks altogether and was still used to telling time mostly by the sun and moon.) But when he reached his floor in the apartment building, he discovered that Root had been telling the truth. Elias’ man Anthony was lounging just outside his door. Cheyenne reached into his pocket and dialed his telephone before pulling out his key.

“Mr. Wade,” Anthony called, straightening as Cheyenne approached.

“Anthony,” Cheyenne returned with a nod, deciding not to ask how Elias had learned this address or the alias Cheyenne was using here. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

“Nah, not too long. Like to talk to you for a minute.”

Cheyenne tilted his head, unlocked the door, and ushered Anthony through it. “What can I do for you?” he asked once they were both inside and the door was closed again.

“My boss wanted me to ask you how you’re doing with that chess problem from the other day,” Anthony answered.

“Oh. Well, uh… maybe I’d better just show you.” Cheyenne hung up his hat. “Mind if I get my chess set out?”

Anthony shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Making sure Anthony could see exactly what he was doing, Cheyenne retrieved his chess set from the drawer where he kept it, laid the board out on the coffee table, and began setting out the pieces. Before he got too far, however, he stopped and got out his poker chips as well. Anthony’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t ask what Cheyenne was doing or why; clearly he remembered the part of the conversation in which Elias had suggested they needed some way to indicate more players. So Cheyenne did his best to indicate the current state of affairs with the expanded color options—the Terney bishop off the board on a red chip, for example, the Laskey pawn on white’s back rank on a blue chip, and so on. He made sure to put only as many white pieces on the board as there were members of Mr. Finch’s team, but he piled the black poker chips behind the black king and the red and green chips to either side of the board. As an afterthought, he put one green chip, representing Elias, on white’s back rank behind the rook that stood for Miss Carter.

Then he looked up at Anthony. “Show him that and tell him I know the gambit but not every move. Let me know what he says.”

Anthony nodded once, took out his pocket telephone, and snapped a photo of the board. Then he fiddled with the screen, and a moment later, there was an answering chime. “Checkmate in ten moves,” he read. “Key fork at move nine, possibly set up with move eight. Will send a hint to your rook. My best to Harold and John.”

Cheyenne nodded thoughtfully. “Thank you, and thank him for me.”

“Will do. You have a good afternoon.” And Anthony left before Cheyenne could even get up to let him out.

Cheyenne sighed and pulled his telephone out of his pocket. “Did you get all that?” he asked into it.

“Ten days,” Mr. Finch replied. “And something key happening on the ninth day.”

“Gives us a timetable, anyway.”

“So it does… but I do wonder just what Elias knows—and how soon Det. Carter plans to tell us.”

* * *

“So,” John began when he called Carter the next morning. “Got any plans for Veterans Day yet?”

Carter chuckled wryly. “Busted, huh?”

“What’d Elias have to say?”

“John—”

“Joss, if you’re gonna start a war—”

She huffed. “All right. The Russians have a big shipment of drugs coming in that night. HR’s supposed to give them protection for it, but he said he’s heard HR’s planning to up their price to make up for losing the baseball. If Cheyenne’s right about Yogorov’s vice bein’ pride where Quinn’s is greed….”

“Especially if Terney’s been telling tall tales about Simmons….”

“Odds are, Yogorov’s gonna tell Simmons what he can do with his higher prices and walk away from the whole deal.”

He nodded. “Is that enough? Or _are_ you going to start that war?”

She sighed. “You once asked me to trust you to do what needed to be done.”

He sighed in turn. He hadn’t been thinking straight that night, when she’d come back from New Rochelle—finding out all about Jessica, apparently, and about who he’d been Before—to catch him with wife-beating Marshal Brad Jennings in his trunk, headed to Mexico. When he’d finally calmed down after delivering Jennings, still breathing, to the Federales with enough drugs to put him away for a very long time, John had realized why Finch had tried to keep him out of that case. But he had kept his promise to Carter by not killing Jennings, just like he hadn’t killed Peter Arndt after finding out what Arndt had done to Jessica. And he knew that was what she was asking him to trust her with now: the ability to remember where the lines were and not cross them, no matter how reckless her actions were.

“I don’t like it,” he said aloud. “But it would sell Yogorov on the idea that HR is the enemy, and it would sell Quinn on the idea that you’re flying solo.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Just… promise me that you’ll be careful.”

“I will, if you promise not to tell Cheyenne until it’s too late for him to stop me.”

He couldn’t help smiling. “If anyone gets to ruin your fun on this case, it’s me.”

Her answering laugh warmed him to the core. He’d heard it all too seldom since her relationship with Beecher had soured that spring.

“So we’ll plan to take Quinn on the 12th,” he concluded.

“Right,” she agreed.

“Will I see you again before then?”

“Better not. When I tell Quinn I’m closin’ the book on Cal’s murder, I’m pretty sure he’ll start havin’ me tailed.”

“All right,” he said, not bothering to keep the worry and disappointment out of his voice.

“It’s nine days, John.”

“A lot can happen in nine days, Joss.”

There was a pause before she said gently, “I know.”

There was so much to be said—so much Bodie would have urged John to say—but he didn’t have the words to say it here and now. All that came out was, “I’ll see you at Monahan’s.”

“See you then,” she said and hung up.

He sat staring at his darkened phone for a long time afterward, wondering why it was so hard for him to say three short words. Then he finally pulled himself together and started making phone calls to arrange a way for himself and Bodie to practice getting Quinn on and off the train.

* * *

“We’ve timed it eight times,” a frustrated Cheyenne reported at a reduced strategy meeting with Mr. Finch, Reese, and Fusco Friday evening. “There’s no way we can get Quinn and ourselves off the roof and into the boxcar ’fore we have to jump out at the used car lot. If it were just the three of us, we could make it, but Quinn’s liable to put up a fight, an’ I can’t see any way to cut the time.”

“You won’t have to,” Mr. Finch replied. “In arranging the train, I discovered that one of our former numbers now drives freight trains for the Long Island Railroad. It was a simple matter to have him assigned to our shipment. He’ll stop the train in the park here”—he pointed to a spot on the track, out of sight of the main road but near a walking trail and considerably closer to Monahan’s house than the bridges at the far southern end of the park. “Once you reach the train, you should be able to board in less than thirty seconds, which shouldn’t raise any questions at Jamaica Station. The trick, of course, will be in getting the train to the right spot at exactly the right moment.”

“And gettin’ yourselves there as well,” Fusco chimed in. “I drove down there yesterday. There’s only one footpath you can use to get across Jackie Robinson, and that’s here.” He pointed out the path in question on the map; it led almost directly to the point where they were supposed to meet the train. “Anywhere else you’d try to cross, there’s a six-foot fence on both sides of the road.” Then he pulled his finger northward from the park. “But if you try to cross _Union Turnpike_ there, you’ll be runnin’ across five lanes of traffic and two medians with no stoplight and no cover.”

“What’s the traffic like that late at night?” Reese asked.

Fusco shrugged. “Eh, pretty dead, if I’m honest. Not that it’s all that busy durin’ daylight hours, except rush hour. You could probably make it—if it’s not wall-to-wall HR cruisers before you even get there.”

“That’s what we’re counting on Root to ensure.” Reese studied the map. “Looks like our best bet is to drive down here to Metropolitan, ditch the car at a bus stop, and go the rest of the way on foot. That should get us into the park before they have time to get organized.”

Cheyenne rubbed the back of his neck. “The one thing we can’t plan for is people, bystanders. Root can handle cameras, but she can’t affect human eyes.”

Reese shook his head. “That would be a problem anywhere in New York. The other judges on Zoe’s list all live in areas that are just as built up. What Root can do is… well, cut the telegraph lines, effectively, make it so any messages have to be sent by runner. Most New Yorkers who’ve only witnessed something odd and want to call the cops might be willing to try a second time if the first phone call gets cut off, but they won’t usually try a third.”

Fusco grimaced. “Y’know, this whole thing would be a lot easier if Carter just went to that judge whose kid you guys rescued a couple years ago… what’s his name, Gates?”

“Unfortunately, Judge Gates was appointed to a position on the State Court of Appeals this spring,” said Mr. Finch. “However, with Det. Carter’s permission, I have sent him a copy of the key to her safe deposit box and a request that he not begin swearing out warrants until after we begin our operation here.”

“Besides, Gates was clean,” Reese added. “Even if he were willing to help us trap Quinn, there’s a good chance Quinn wouldn’t buy it.”

“I hate this town,” Cheyenne muttered and didn’t realize he’d finally said it out loud until the other men gave him sympathetic looks and Reese put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’ll be a lot cleaner by this time Wednesday,” said Reese.

That wasn’t exactly what Cheyenne had meant, but he took the attempted comfort in the spirit in which it was given and returned a grim smile.

* * *

Cheyenne spent Monday trying to rest and distract himself by learning more about Armistice Day and World War I. Whatever the key event of the day was supposed to be, no one had asked for his help with it, so he could only assume it was something Miss Carter could handle herself. Worrying about it wouldn’t help—not that he was able to stop worrying entirely, but he did try, at least until he finally gave up on _All Quiet on the Western Front_ and spent a good two hours in prayer.

Arriving at the library the next day with Reese and discovering that Mr. Finch had gotten _thirty-eight_ numbers that morning, all of them members of HR, caught Cheyenne somewhat off-guard. Learning that the numbers had been generated after a Russian drug shipment had been stolen and that the person who’d laid the ambush to frame HR was _Miss Carter_ was even more worrisome. But worst was discovering that Elias had given Miss Carter the hint about the shipment after Anthony’s visit—which Reese had known and Mr. Finch and Sam had suspected.

“Did _everyone_ know about this besides me?!” Cheyenne finally exploded.

“Fusco didn’t,” Sam noted with a shrug.

“She knew you’d try to stop her,” Reese added.

Cheyenne rounded on him. “So why didn’t you?”

Reese didn’t flinch. “Because she needs to sell the idea that she’s gone rogue and has no backup. And she asked me to trust her.”

“Not everything she’s done the past few days has been this reckless,” Mr. Finch chimed in. “She was able to bluejack Quinn’s phone Sunday morning, which has allowed me to record some rather important pieces of evidence. I’m sure she’ll still try to goad Quinn into confessing that he ordered Beecher’s murder, but that will be only the final nail in his proverbial coffin.”

Cheyenne shook his head. “How could you let her—”

“Bodie,” Reese interrupted. “She’s a warrior woman.”

Cheyenne looked away. He’d known that about her from the start, but he didn’t see it as a reason to let her do something so foolish.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Sam insisted.

“And it’s not like she _has_ gone full rogue,” Reese continued. “She hasn’t destroyed her phone; she hasn’t changed the plan. Elias called these moves ten days ago, and if he’s right, we _will_ get Quinn tonight.”

Cheyenne looked back at Reese, intending to ask why he wasn’t more worried about Miss Carter’s safety in the meantime. But something in Reese’s eyes answered the question before Cheyenne could voice it: Reese was deeply worried, but because Miss Carter had asked for his trust, he was willing to defend her choice.

“I still don’t like it,” Cheyenne grumbled.

“Neither do we,” Reese returned, which was probably as close as he’d get to admitting how terrified he was for her. “All we can do is be there tonight.”

Cheyenne sighed heavily. “All right.”

“That reminds me,” said Mr. Finch and hobbled off into the stacks for a moment, then returned carrying a hat box and a garment bag, which he handed to Cheyenne. “I thought perhaps you might be more comfortable wearing this suit tonight than your regular one.”

Puzzled, Cheyenne opened the garment bag to reveal an outfit that almost exactly matched the one his friend Robbie James had given him when she’d strong-armed him into managing her casino for a short time. The black wool suit must have been made from a period pattern; the lines were much closer to what he was used to wearing back home than to modern suits, and the coat wouldn’t be in the way of his guns. There was also a vest made of silver silk brocade and a white shirt with a black string tie. It still looked to him like something to be buried in, but if it did herald trouble, at least he’d go out looking like himself. The hat box contained a matching black hat—but the band was made of beads woven in patterns he recognized from childhood.

“I commissioned that from a Northern Cheyenne artist,” Mr. Finch stated as Cheyenne turned the hat to look at the protective symbols and lines of coup count that ringed the band. “It’s more colorful than I’d anticipated, but she said traditional beading is hardly ever done with a black-and-white palette.”

Cheyenne nodded, still examining the design. But then he stopped and ran his finger over one spot that wasn’t traditional. At each end of the band, mostly hidden by the horsehair tie, the artist had placed a set of fox tracks… in grey beads.

“I hope it’s acceptable,” Mr. Finch continued, sounding worried.

Cheyenne finally looked back at him and smiled. “It’s good medicine. Thank you, Mr. Finch.”

He could only hope, as he put the hat back in the box, that it would be enough to protect Reese and Miss Carter as well.


	11. Checkmate

The afternoon seemed to crawl by as Cheyenne waited for word and for Boots and Saddles.[1] He tried to settle in and read, but none of the books he had on hand fit his mood— _All Quiet_ was too dark, _Roughing It_ too light, _Phantastes_ too strange, and he couldn’t focus well enough to keep up with _The Lord of the Rings_. He wasn’t normally this tense before a battle… but then again, even when he didn’t have full freedom of action, he normally knew the ground and wasn’t waiting for a lady to pit her enemies against each other.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t know ladies who _would_ pit their enemies against each other, but they were usually more like Samantha Crawford. Joss Carter had been Cheyenne’s first friend in this year—she’d saved his life. He didn’t like knowing she had this ruthless streak, and he liked seeing it in action even less. Sure, he knew as well as anyone that there was a time to work outside the law to see justice done, but he couldn’t protect her if she wanted to do it without him while also wearing a badge. But she knew perfectly well he couldn’t track her in this concrete madhouse on his own.

Well, Mr. Finch was apparently keeping tabs on her, and Reese and Sam were on hand to ride out if Miss Carter needed backup. All Cheyenne could do was wait and pray… and clean his guns.

It was full dark, or as fully dark as it ever got here, by the time Cheyenne finished with the last piece of his arsenal, yet he still had three hours to kill before Boots and Saddles. So he took his time with supper, shined his boots again, triple-checked every weapon he’d be carrying that night and put all the spare ammo he could fit on his gun belt and in his pockets, and made sure to shave after his shower. As he dressed, he imagined Sam teasing him about having what she’d call a hot date—but it wasn’t his appearance he was worried about.

Dressing and arming himself felt so odd this time, having to reacquaint himself with styles he’d have worn without a second thought six months ago while adding parts like the ballistic vest and shoulder holster that had become uncomfortably familiar since he’d gone to work for Mr. Finch. It took a moment’s walking around and several practice draws for the gun on his hip to feel natural again. Yet once he’d added the string tie and hat to the outfit, it was a jolt to remember that he still needed to put his telephone in his pocket and the earpiece in his ear. He did so with a sigh, wishing Tom and Bronco were there so at least he wouldn’t be off kilter alone.

And then he _wasn’t_ alone.

“Ready?” Reese asked quietly from behind him.

“You’re early,” said Cheyenne, turning around. “What happened?”

“Just got back from Red Hook. Carter took a few pot shots at Quinn and made it look like Yogorov did it, so HR rounded up most of the top Bratva brass for execution. Except Carter called the FBI and stashed the stolen drugs in HR’s cars.”

Cheyenne frowned. “Why?”

Reese shrugged. “Diversion, apparently. Not only does it get those pawns off the board, but it isolated Yogorov so she could arrest him and get his sworn statement implicating Quinn in Beecher’s death. She’s got Yogorov stashed out of town while she comes back for Quinn.”

Cheyenne sighed heavily. “She’s been spendin’ too much time around Elias.”

Reese shook his head. “She’s always been capable of this. I’ve known that from the night we met—the compassion she showed me was genuine, but I knew exactly what she was doing when she offered me a cup of water with the goal of getting my fingerprints from it. She’s a tough cop, and she’s good at her job. She even sold me out to the CIA once when they had her convinced I was a serial killer—of course, she didn’t know at the time that they were trying to kill me. Still, she’d be scarier than Shaw if her moral compass wasn’t pointed in the right direction.”

“Those planted drugs could ruin her case. That happened to Tom Brewster once.”

“ _Bodie_. What’s done is done. Besides, Terney recorded a full confession before he disappeared. Apparently Yogorov gave him until dawn to get his affairs in order, but Carter can’t get any more out of Yogorov than that.”

Cheyenne sighed heavily.

“Come on.” Reese clapped Cheyenne on the shoulder. “You can yell at her on the boat.”

Cheyenne didn’t like having anything to yell at her about, but he didn’t say so. He just pocketed his keys and followed Reese out the back way.

Once they were in the car, Mr. Finch called each of their pocket telephones in turn to add them to the party line. “I’ve nearly finished setting up the system for Root,” he announced once Cheyenne was connected. “I’ve taken every precaution I can, but I am still rather apprehensive about all this.”

“I think we all are, Finch,” said Reese.

“Laskey’s at the safe house,” Sam reported. “Collier should sleep through this, but in case he doesn’t, I’ve briefed Laskey on Vigilance and warned him not to let himself get recruited.”

“I’d have thought he’d learned his lesson with HR,” said Mr. Finch.

“Can’t be too careful,” countered Reese.

“Where’s Miss Carter?” Cheyenne asked.

“She just arrived at Det. Fusco’s apartment,” answered Mr. Finch. “They should be starting their show for the cameras any moment.”

Cheyenne nodded. The two detectives didn’t have a script per se, but at the first strategy meeting, they’d rehearsed the broad outlines of this little sketch, meant for the benefit of the HR mole at the Real Time Crime Center. Fusco would confront Miss Carter about keeping him out of the loop; she would give him a fake safe deposit box key with some rigamarole about “if anything happens to me”; he’d talk her into letting him come along, and she’d accept on the condition that he let her drive. Then he’d give her a fake set of car keys and go back inside to arm up, at which point she’d throw the fake keys away and drive off. Actually, Miss Carter had given copies of the real safe deposit box key to Fusco and Mr. Finch at the meeting, and Fusco had his safely hidden. The fake was meant to be a decoy in case HR captured Fusco—even if he gave them the correct bank information, the key wouldn’t fit.

“And I believe I’m as ready as I can be,” Mr. Finch continued. “I won’t be patching Root directly into this call, as she said she’ll need her own line to communicate with the Machine, but I will be putting this call on speaker in case she needs to convey verbal directions.”

“Here’s hoping she doesn’t,” Reese muttered.

“I’m on my way to meet Fusco,” said Sam. “Any change in plans?”

“Not so far,” answered Mr. Finch. “Please be careful, Miss Shaw.”

“You, too.” Then there was a beep, but Cheyenne was reasonably sure Sam had only muted her end of the call rather than hanging up.

The line fell silent while Reese took a roundabout route toward Queens and Mr. Finch went to get Root. Cheyenne tried unsuccessfully to update his mental map of where everyone was and where they would be shortly. Everything moved too fast, and there were too many unknowns for one man to keep track of unaided.

His reverie was broken when Root’s voice said “Well!” with the bright tone of a lady sitting down at a poker table with a group of unwary men she meant to fleece. “Good evening, gentlemen—and ladies. We are all hooked up to the RTCC’s feeds, and I am about to start tracking the GPS signals for all HR personnel. The Machine says it’ll look less suspicious if we block communications only for the HR members who show up at Monahan’s house, and I won’t begin that until just before John and Cheyenne move in. Let’s see… there are John and Cheyenne… there’s Shaw… Fusco just went inside… there go his keys… there goes Carter! And we’re off to a roaring start.”

“Are you planning to give us play-by-play of the _whole_ evening, Root?” Reese asked.

“Did you want me to?”

“No,” Reese, Sam, and Cheyenne chorused.

“How about color commentary?”

“ _No._ ” Mr. Finch added his voice that time.

Root gave one of her condescending chuckles. “Good thing I’m gonna be too busy, then.”

Cheyenne rolled his eyes.

That was the last they heard from Root for quite a while, however. Mr. Finch handled what few status updates were needed, the most important of which was when Miss Carter finally called Monahan just as Reese pulled into the parking lot of the Catholic church just down the street from Monahan’s house. Monahan, as expected, told Miss Carter to get to his house as soon as she could and then promptly called Quinn, who in turn called Simmons.

Miss Carter, meanwhile, made a couple of other calls and then called Reese, who put the call on speaker. “It’s me,” she said. “I’m on Astoria Boulevard, headed your way.”

“We’re at the church,” Reese replied. “What’s your ETA?”

“Between 11 and 11:15.”

“All right. We’ll see you soon.”

“Thanks, John.” And she hung up before the faint tremor Cheyenne heard in her voice could become more definite.

“She’s scared,” Reese observed quietly.

“Who wouldn’t be?” Cheyenne returned.

Reese smiled and raised his voice. “Finch?”

“All security cameras on Juno, Kessel, and Loubet accessible to the RTCC are on a sixty-second loop,” Mr. Finch replied. “And there are no HR patrol units within a mile. You’re clear to move.”

Reese and Cheyenne got out in tandem, shutting the car doors as silently as possible, and approached Monahan’s house from the blind side. Ducking past the windows, they let themselves into the back yard and hid in the shadow of the storage shed that stood in one back corner of the property.

“Switching off the loop,” Mr. Finch announced once they were in place.

“Simmons picked Quinn up five minutes ago,” Root added. “There are three other men in the car. They should reach your location in twenty.”

So while Cheyenne wondered, not for the first time, why anyone who could afford a house the size of Monahan’s would willingly buy one in a city, crammed so close to its neighbors that there was just enough room to walk single-file between them and with a yard that would barely hold a decent chicken coop, the team watched and waited for Quinn and Simmons to arrive. It was just about twenty minutes later when Mr. Finch reported that the HR men had likewise parked several blocks away, with a patrol unit watching the car, and were walking up to the house. But Cheyenne heard little until Monahan passed the French doors on his way to the front of the house and returned with the HR men, one of whom carried a roll of plastic. Even when Simmons began issuing orders, Cheyenne couldn’t hear distinctly enough to know what was being said, but he could see the other men begin unrolling the plastic to cover the floor.

“Finch,” Reese breathed. “They’re planning to kill her here.”

“I know,” Mr. Finch said. “I’ve got ears on the room. And I am recording.”

“Let me get you eyes as well.” Reese pulled out his pocket telephone and snapped several photos before putting it away again. Cheyenne could only assume that Reese had gotten photos of everyone in the room—he couldn’t see well enough himself.

“Thank you, Mr. Reese. Det. Carter has just turned onto Kessel.”

At almost the same moment, Simmons gestured to Monahan, who went to wait in the darkened front room. Less than a minute later, Cheyenne heard Miss Carter’s car pull up and park and her car door open and close. Reese signaled to Cheyenne, and the two of them crept forward to hide on either side of the French doors while everyone inside was focused on ambushing Miss Carter. As soon as she saw Quinn, Miss Carter surrendered, dropped her gun, and let Simmons destroy her phone and herd her onto the plastic, but as Mr. Finch had expected, she goaded Quinn into gloating over having ordered Beecher’s death. Then she lamented having tried to play a lone hand—and Cheyenne tucked his coat behind his revolver and drew his Desert Eagle while Reese took up his own position.

“But then I realized you’re just too dirty,” Miss Carter continued. “Everywhere I turned, you had friends ready to help you out and I was alone. So… I called some friends of my own.”

And Reese blew the French doors open with a shotgun blast. Then he tossed the shotgun to Miss Carter and drew his pistol while Cheyenne gave covering fire, sending Simmons and Monahan diving for cover. By the time Miss Carter had hold of Quinn’s arm and was pushing him out of the room with Reese and Cheyenne on their heels, the three junior HR men were down. Simmons grabbed his radio, but Cheyenne shot it out of his hand. Neither Simmons nor Monahan moved again while the team hustled Quinn into the front room, where Reese took point and Cheyenne covered the rear.

“Give me your keys,” Reese demanded as they emerged in the front yard.

“We’re drivin’?” Miss Carter asked but passed her keys to Reese.

“Not far.”

Cheyenne kept his eyes on the house as Miss Carter shoved Quinn into the back seat of her car and Reese jogged around to the driver’s seat, but he made the mistake of holstering his pistol before opening his own car door. Naturally, that was when Simmons burst out of the house. But Cheyenne drew his revolver with the speed of thought and put three rounds into Simmons’ head before Simmons could get one shot off. Then the engine started, and Cheyenne barely had time to duck into the car before Reese sped away. Cheyenne managed to get his door shut just as Reese turned onto 72nd Avenue to go south.

“I didn’t know that kind of quick draw was _real_ ,” said Root’s voice in Cheyenne’s ear, sounding awed. “I thought it was something that only happened in the movies.”

“Is Simmons dead?” Reese asked.

“As a doornail,” Root confirmed at the same time Quinn answered, “Simmons is a resilient man. You may be surprised.”

“Three shots to the head would be tough for anyone to survive,” Cheyenne noted, replacing the spent brass in his revolver.

“You-know-who is sure he didn’t,” Root agreed.

“Where on _earth_ do you think you’re taking me?” Quinn asked as Reese turned onto Metropolitan and Cheyenne put a fresh magazine in his Desert Eagle.

“Federal building downtown,” said Miss Carter.

Quinn chuckled. “You really think you can get across _any_ of the bridges between here and Manhattan without my boys knowing about it?”

“No,” said Reese and parked beside a bus stop. “That’s why we’re not going that way. Let’s go.”

“Be sure to leave Quinn’s phone in the car,” Mr. Finch cautioned as everyone got out.

But when Cheyenne turned to pass that on to Miss Carter, she was already tossing Quinn’s phone back inside. She’d already handcuffed Quinn, too, and the shotgun was on the seat. Cheyenne nodded his approval and shut the door, and then they were off, marching briskly down Metropolitan to 72nd Road and south toward Union Turnpike.

“This just in,” said Root as they turned the corner. “Generalissimo Francisco Simmons is still dead,[2] but one of the HR mooks just shot Monahan. I’ve intercepted all calls out of the house and all 911 calls from the neighbors. The uniformed officers watching Simmons’ car are looking anxious, but so far it looks like they haven’t talked themselves into going in without orders.”

“The train is leaving the station now,” Mr. Finch added. “It should reach the park in about five minutes. There is no traffic on Union Turnpike at the moment.”

Reese and Cheyenne nodded to each other and picked up the pace.

Quinn looked around nervously as the team started to cross Union Turnpike without breaking stride. “You can’t be serious,” he said as they cleared the first median and started across the second lane. “Even if we don’t get run down by a passing car….”

“Never go into the parks at night,” Reese recited, sounding bored. “We know.”

“Still clear,” said Mr. Finch as they reached the second median.

They were just turning onto the path into the park when Root said, “Welp, looks like the three bears got themselves patched up enough to try to get back to the car themselves. Simmons is still dead, though, and we’ve still got their phones blocked.”

Cheyenne had a feeling it was going to be a long night for more reasons than the time required to get back to Manhattan.

The park was quiet compared to the rest of the city, which made it easier to hear human-sized rustles and whispers further off the path. But “They packin’ heat” was the phrase Cheyenne picked up the few times he could make out words, and that seemed to be enough to keep whatever miscreants were hiding amid the trees at bay. So the team made good time and reached the railroad track just as the train’s lantern became visible through the trees.

“You _can’t_ be serious!” Quinn repeated.

“Sometimes you gotta think outside the box, Alonzo,” Miss Carter said as the train put on its brakes.

“By now my men have staked out every station on this line—”

“They haven’t!” Root assured Reese and Cheyenne quickly.

“—and there is no way you can possibly get past them.”

“Who said we were getting off at a station?” asked Reese as the train stopped. “We’re not getting on at one.”

Cheyenne vaulted into the open boxcar first to make sure there were no surprises. Finding it clear, he reached down to grab Quinn’s hands and pulled him up while Reese pushed from behind. Then Reese and Miss Carter scrambled in while Cheyenne kept Quinn under control, and Reese shut the door they’d just come through. A moment later, the train jolted and moved off.

“Something you should know, Mr. Reese,” said Mr. Finch. “The fence around the used car lot is topped with razor wire. You’ll have to dismount a hundred yards further along—Miss Shaw left the car in the parking lot of the grocery store that backs onto the track.”

Reese didn’t reply, only went to the opposite door to watch for landmarks. Less than a minute later, they passed under the two bridges at the southern edge of the park and came out into the open.

Quinn then looked up at Cheyenne with what was probably meant to be an ingratiating smile. “Mr. Merritt, I am sorry not to have gotten to see you perform in _Wagons West_. Your dedication to your craft is truly remarkable.”

Cheyenne didn’t respond.

“Perhaps I could arrange for new backing for the show—that is, if your repertory company still has any interest in staging it here in New York and if you’ll surrender me and your friends to my men when we reach them.”

Blatant attempts at bribery always disgusted Cheyenne, whether he was wearing a badge or not. But this one, coming after Simmons had traded barbs with Miss Carter about Shakespeare before the shootout, somehow reminded Cheyenne of the trap he’d sprung on Nick Avalon some years earlier. “Like the man said,” Cheyenne replied. “‘The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ ’Course, that kind of assumes you’ve got a conscience to catch.”

“Thirty seconds,” Root warned before Quinn could come up with a retort.

Cheyenne ushered Quinn and Miss Carter over to Reese as the train approached a high-sided bridge. Once they were past it, Reese sat down on the edge of the doorway and motioned for the others to do the same. The train did slow down slightly, but it was still going faster than Cheyenne had expected when the gradient leveled out and Reese signaled for them to jump out. Miss Carter had to drag Quinn out with them, which meant he landed wrong and twisted his ankle, but no one spared him a moment’s sympathy. Cheyenne only supported him from one side and Miss Carter from the other while Reese led them up the track and around the fence to the parking lot and the next car.

“Breaking news,” said Root as they reached the end of the track. “Generalissimo Francisco Simmons is _still_ dead, but his minions have finally reached their vehicle, only to realize that none of them have the keys. We let them get a call out for an ambulance because _somebody_ doesn’t want them to actually bleed to death—”

“Human lives are generally worth saving, Miss Groves,” Mr. Finch interrupted.

“But that was all. I think you’ll be able to make the river before—oh, one of them just passed out—before they can try to get word out to be looking for you guys—”

“We should probably also allow a coroner’s van to get through to the house.”

“Harold….”

“Out of respect for the dead….”

“No, no, wait, hear me out. If it looks like we can’t keep the news contained, we use Simmons’ cell phone to send HR to all the wrong places.”

“Perhaps we should discuss this more privately.”

“Hey, guys,” Sam’s voice broke in. “I left you a present in the glove compartment. But tell Joss I will want the Nano back.”

Reese led the way unerringly to the right car, and Quinn seemed startled that Reese unlocked it using the key. Once the team was inside and underway, Cheyenne opened the glove compartment and pulled out a bulky, heavy envelope. He could tell by the feel that there was a gun inside, along with something long, flat, and rectangular. The second item was the wrong shape to be a magazine, but knowing Sam, it was likely to be a syringe case.

Cheyenne handed the envelope back to Miss Carter. “Sam left this for you,” he said. “Says to tell you she’ll want part of it back.”

Miss Carter accepted the envelope and opened it. “Awww, she remembered,” she said with an audible smile as she slid the contents out.

“What is that?” Quinn asked.

“Two ways of makin’ sure you don’t give us any more trouble.”

“I haven’t _begun_ to give you trouble, Joss.”

“And I’ll just make sure it stays that way.”

Quinn gasped as Miss Carter jabbed the syringe into his arm; Cheyenne looked into the back seat just in time to see her push the plunger.

“The syringe has ketamine,” Sam said at the same moment. “It should wear off about the time you guys get to North Cove.”

“This just in!” Root chirped. “Generalissimo Francisco Simmons is _still_ dead—”

“I think that’s about enough of that joke for one night,” Mr. Finch interrupted, plainly irritated.

“—and the patrol unit has handed his minions off to the ambulance and gone to try to track you. They found Carter’s SUV, but it looks like they’ll need a bloodhound to figure out where you went from there. Right now they’re arguing about what to do next. No leaks so far, but John, you might want to break the speed limit. We’ll coordinate the lights for you.”

Reese didn’t respond verbally, but he did push the car to a speed that still made Cheyenne’s head spin. Every traffic light Cheyenne could see ahead of them suddenly turned green, which caused some honking and probably swearing, but the car sailed through every intersection and wove through what traffic there was with ease. In four minutes flat, they reached the marina in Hamilton Beach, where Mr. Finch had moored a boat (he called it a small yacht) for them, and they boarded while Quinn was still able to walk under his own power.

“I’ve left overcoats in the cabin for everyone,” Mr. Finch noted as Reese and Cheyenne cast off and weighed anchor and Miss Carter guided Quinn inside. “I expect it to be fairly chilly out on the water.”

Reese grinned. “You spoil us, Harold.”

As the boat began to move away from the pier, Miss Carter came back up with an overcoat for Reese. He thanked her, put it on, and took the helm while Cheyenne and Miss Carter went below.

“I’m afraid you are leaving just at low tide,” Mr. Finch continued, “but that boat has a shallow enough draft that it shouldn’t matter, and the tide will be turning in a matter of minutes. Just—please be careful, John.”

“I will,” said Reese and started the engine.

Quinn had already lain down on the bed in the prow and was fast asleep when Miss Carter and Cheyenne entered the cabin. While Miss Carter checked Quinn’s pulse, Cheyenne looked her over and saw not only the bulge of Sam’s gun holstered at the small of her back but also an earpiece in her ear. That must mean Sam had left her a new phone, too.

Miss Carter straightened with a nod, then heaved a sigh of relief and turned to Cheyenne with a weary smile. “Hi, Cheyenne.”

“How are you holdin’ up?” Cheyenne asked.

“Okay. To be honest, I wasn’t sure we’d get this far. But… here we are. And I’m plugged in now,” she added with a twinkle and gestured toward her ear.

He smiled. “Well, we’re gonna get you the rest of the way. Any news, Miss Groves?”

“Not so far,” said Root. “The guys you shot are on their way to the hospital, and the unis are still arguing over Carter’s car. Unless something changes, we’re gonna wait until y’all get past Coney Island before we send the group text from Zombie Simmons.”

“I’m not sure that’s better than the Francisco Franco joke,” said Mr. Finch.

Cheyenne felt a headache coming on.

“The idea,” Root continued as if Mr. Finch hadn’t spoken, “is to get HR focused on Queens and the East Side so nobody’s anywhere near North Cove. Whether or not it’ll work remains to be seen, but….”

“Well, as diversions go, I’ve seen worse,” said Cheyenne. “You can’t exactly stampede a herd o’ longhorns through Central Park and expect to tie up the whole gang.”

Miss Carter laughed.

“Now I kinda want to, just to see what would happen,” said Root.

“Bad idea,” said Sam.

“Not Central Park, though, more like Wall Street.”

“ _Very_ bad idea,” said Fusco, and when he’d joined the call, Cheyenne had no clue.

Still, Cheyenne agreed. “I take it you’ve never seen a stampede in person, let alone what one can do when it goes through a town.”

Root paused. “You _have?_ ”

“Imagine the worst flash flood you’ve ever seen, only instead of water, it’s solid flesh an’ sharp horns an’ hooves. When those beeves get spooked, all they know to do is run, and they don’t care what’s in their way. It’s bad enough on the open range, where you’ve got some hope of escape. It’s worse when they’re headed for a cliff an’ you’ve got to turn ’em or lose the whole herd. But the worst is in town. I saw a man once run his herd through a town street to take revenge on folks he thought tried to cheat ’im—they did so much damage that every business on that street had to close, and some o’ the buildings were barely standing at the end of it. Almost killed a good friend of mine.”

“Oh.” Root seemed somewhat taken aback, which surprised Cheyenne. Maybe the Machine was chiding her as well.

“So where are you, Shaw?” Reese asked.

“Washington Heights,” Sam answered. “We’re in separate cars just in case we need to split up.”

“At least we’re already over here if HR does shut down the bridges,” Fusco added. “Getting _out_ of Manhattan’s gonna be a lot easier than getting _in_.”

“Well, we can at least catch our breath,” said Mr. Finch. “We’ll continue monitoring the situation from this end, but it doesn’t look like we need to worry quite yet. Without Simmons, it appears that no one quite knows what to do, at least of those who currently know of Quinn’s arrest.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” said Reese.

Cheyenne finally found a place to hang up his hat and returned his attention to Miss Carter. “Want some coffee?”

Miss Carter nodded. “Thanks.”

Cheyenne nodded back and ushered her to a seat at the table before going to the galley, which had a small stovetop. He quickly located the coffeepot, coffee, and creamer and soon had a pot of coffee on the fire to brew.

“Is this your first time on a yacht, Cheyenne?” she asked as he sat down across from her.

He looked around. “You mean a boat like this? Yes, ma’am. I’ve taken a canoe down a river before, rode a Mississippi riverboat a time or two, but I’ve never been out to sea before. Trains an’ horses are more my line.”

She smiled.

“You?”

“First time to actually sail in one. I don’t usually set foot on a boat unless it’s a crime scene.”

He chuckled, and they lapsed into companionable silence until, just about the time Cheyenne got up to turn the fire off, Mr. Finch said, “Oh, dear.”

“What?” asked everyone who wasn’t in the library.

“It appears someone may have called the Coast Guard,” Mr. Finch announced. “A cutter has just left the station on Staten Island and is headed in your direction.”

“Where’d the call come from, Finch?” Reese asked.

“Working on it, Mr. Reese.”

“I _can_ confirm it wasn’t any of the HR members currently in the know,” said Root. “My guess is it was someone who lives near the docks in Hamilton Beach who saw a bunch of people dressed in black boarding a boat and thought it looked suspicious.”

“I just need to know whether we’re about to have a fight on our hands,” Reese insisted.

“Offhand, I’d say not,” said Mr. Finch. “It would be better to answer their radio call, at least, so they’re less likely to stop you. But I’ll let you know if we discover otherwise.”

Miss Carter shook her head. “I knew this was too easy.”

“Hey,” said Cheyenne and put a hand on her shoulder. “We ain’t licked yet.”

She smiled tightly at him but didn’t seem all that encouraged.

It was only another minute or two before Mr. Finch reported that the call had indeed come from a number in Hamilton Beach, shortly after which the Coast Guard vessel hailed Reese on the radio. Reese identified himself as John Rooney and gave the name of the boat and its destination. But apparently that wasn’t enough, because the Coast Guardsman asked permission to come aboard.

Reese granted permission, but Root said, “They can’t know about Quinn. What are they looking for?”

“It could be anything,” said Sam. “Face it, sailing at low tide is gonna look weird to anyone.”

“I can’t help that, Shaw,” said Reese and stopped the engine.

“I know. I’m just sayin’.”

Cheyenne, meanwhile, had started searching the cabinets and finally found what he was looking for: a nearly-empty bottle of whiskey. He brought it to the table, then took off his gun belt and handed it to Miss Carter, took off his tie and stuffed it in his pocket, and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and about half the buttons on his vest. She hid the gun belt in the storage chest under the seat across from the table. Then he picked up the whiskey bottle again, and together they went to wait by the foot of the stairs that led up to the bridge. They had just gotten into position when footsteps on the deck heralded the arrival of the Coast Guard.

“Good evening, sir,” said a young woman’s voice. “We’re sorry to trouble you. Could I have your name again?”

“John Rooney,” answered Reese.

“Would you mind telling me why you’re out on the water so late, Mr. Rooney?”

“I was out with some friends when I suddenly remembered I was supposed to move my yacht before midnight.”

“Actually,” Mr. Finch began.

“My employer’s yacht, I should say,” Reese corrected smoothly as if Mr. Finch hadn’t spoken. “I have free access to it, but it’s registered in his name.”

“And who is your employer?” the young woman asked.

“Harold Crane.”

“Good catch, John!” said Root.

“May we look around, Mr. Rooney?” the young woman wondered. “It won’t take long, just routine, but the call we received raised the question of smuggling.”

“Oh, no, go right ahead,” said Reese. “My guests may already be asleep….”

That was Cheyenne’s cue. He took a quick swig of whiskey and staggered up the steps as if he were more than three sheets to the wind. “Wash goin’ on, Zhohn?” he slurred as he reached the door to the bridge.

Reese turned in mock alarm. “Jim! Where the devil did you—”

“Yer not my movver,” Cheyenne interrupted, pointing at Reese with the bottle. “If I wanna drink, ish none o’ yer bishnesh.” The boat rolled a little, and Cheyenne let the motion send him crashing into the doorframe.

“Give me that.” Reese swiped the bottle out of Cheyenne’s hand. “How much have you had?”

“Not enough.” Cheyenne pretended to grab for the bottle and miss as Reese sidestepped.

Before the mock fight could come to blows, however, a female hand landed on Cheyenne’s left arm, accompanied by a high-pitched giggle. “Aw, c’mon, Jimmy,” said Miss Carter, sounding nothing like her usual self. “Leave John alone. Zo’s asleep—let’s you an’ me have some fun, huh?”

Cheyenne genuinely lost his balance as he let her pull him around, and he slipped halfway down the stairs to the tune of her giggling. Then he sat down on the stairs and pulled her into his arms with a playful growl, burying his nose—but not his lips—in the crook of her neck and putting his right hand between her shoulder blades and his left on the butt of Sam’s gun. Miss Carter giggled more and squirmed but slid her left arm around his shoulders while her right hand came to rest on the butt of his Desert Eagle.

“Got a clear line o’ sight?” he murmured in her ear.

“Aw, you so sweet,” she answered loudly enough for the Coast Guardsmen to hear and nodded against his shoulder.

“Here’s hopin’ we don’t need it.”

She hummed in agreement.

Behind him, Cheyenne could hear Reese apologizing to the Coast Guardsmen. “He’d been sober for about four months,” Reese was saying. “I don’t know what possessed him to fall off the wagon tonight—”

“It’s really all right, sir,” the young woman assured him. “We won’t disturb you any further.”

Cheyenne looked up just enough to see a man’s face peer in one of the cabin windows briefly, but then he was called away, and the footsteps left. Reese shut the cabin door—and a burst of applause came through the telephone.

“Let’s not do that again,” said Miss Carter with a laugh as Cheyenne let her go.

Cheyenne grinned sheepishly. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No. And thanks for not _actually_ kissing me.”

“You sure you don’t wanna be an actor, Cowboy?” Fusco asked. “That was pretty damn good.”

“Bein’ undercover is all the actin’ I care for,” Cheyenne replied, going back to the galley. There he poured three mugs of coffee, adding creamer to one for Miss Carter, while she pulled on the overcoat Mr. Finch had left for her. Then Cheyenne handed her her coffee and one of the ones he’d left black. “Want me to get the door?”

She shook her head with a smile. “Thanks, Cheyenne.” With that, she headed up to the bridge to take Reese his coffee and watch the scenery, leaving Cheyenne to restore his appearance, put his gun belt back on, have his own coffee in silence, and keep an eye on Quinn.

The relative quiet was finally broken by Root announcing, “Okay, Zombie Simmons text is away, and HR is behaving completely predictably. They’ve shut down all the bridges and tunnels coming into Manhattan, and they’re moving in on the train stations in Queens. The guys who know that Simmons is dead are still offline. _So far_ , there are no HR units near North Cove.”

“I’m in Tribeca,” Sam reported. “I’ll park on Broadway and walk the route from the federal building just to make sure it’s clear.”

“A’right,” Fusco agreed. “I’ll park closer to North Cove. But Cuckoo’s Nest, I need to know the _second_ anyone starts movin’ that direction so I can take off and try to lead ’em away.”

“Didn’t know you cared, Lionel,” Reese teased.

“We’re talkin’ about my favorite partner here, genius,” Fusco shot back. “And I don’t mean you.”

“Aww, Fusco,” Miss Carter said warmly. “You do know I meant what I said about you bein’ the best partner I’ve ever had.”

“Feeling’s mutual, Carter,” Fusco replied with equal warmth.

“Ugh, sell it to the Hallmark Channel,” Sam groaned.

Cheyenne laughed in spite of himself.

The closer the boat came to North Cove, the stronger the tension in the air grew. But both Root and Sam confirmed that there were no HR thugs to be found in that part of Manhattan, so while Fusco helped Reese and Cheyenne tie up at the dock, Sam jumped aboard and helped Miss Carter get Quinn on his feet. And then, with guns at the ready, the team began the final trek to the federal building.

They had just made the turn onto Broadway when Mr. Finch said, “Wait—into the church, now!”

Reese, who as usual had taken point, swiftly led the team up the block and into St. Paul’s Chapel. Only when the door was closed behind them did he whisper, “What is it?”

“A patrol unit left the Brooklyn Bridge, headed toward Park Row. Miss Groves is trying to determine their destination.”

“We are _six blocks away_ —”

“I’m aware of that, Mr. Reese, which is why we can’t risk discovery now.”

“It’s a legitimate call,” Root reported. “Domestic in progress at a hotel on Chambers Street, and that unit truly is the closest one available. But yeah, they would have gone right past you when you got to Chambers, and there’s no way they wouldn’t have noticed you.”

Fusco swore quietly.

“The good news is, it sounds like a straightforward domestic violence call. They shouldn’t need backup. So it’s not like you’ll be stuck there for hours or anything, just… ten minutes or so.”

Reese sighed. “Okay. Tell us as soon as it’s clear.”

“You got it,” Root promised.

Silence fell again, and while Sam guided Quinn to a seat on a nearby staircase, Cheyenne took the opportunity to wander through the church and look at the monuments. There was only so much he could see in the darkness, and he knew there wasn’t time to linger over anything, but since they had the place to themselves and it was the oldest building he’d ever been in, it still seemed a shame not to see what he could—and say a few more prayers while he was at it.

He had just rejoined the others when Root said, “Okay, move now.”

“You guys are gonna stop at Starbucks,” Miss Carter told Reese as Sam and Fusco hauled Quinn to his feet.

“Carter,” Reese protested.

“What, you think you’re gonna walk into FBI headquarters with guns drawn and convince Agent Moss you’re _not_ criminals? You cannot be seen in there with me, and that’s final.”

“That go for everyone?” Fusco asked.

She looked at him, plainly considering, and then smiled. “Okay, no, you can come, Fusco.”

“Good, ’cause otherwise I’da had to ask Glasses to send Bear.”

Reese rolled his eyes and led the way outside.

Those last six blocks felt like the longest walk of Cheyenne’s life. He expected to hear another warning at any moment, but it never came. Yet just when it felt like they would never arrive, they were on the corner in front of Starbucks and across the street from Federal Plaza.

“We’ll wait here until you guys are inside,” Reese promised Miss Carter. “If anything goes wrong—”

“We are crossing the street, John,” she interrupted with a fond smile but a chiding look.

“I’m just saying.”

“I know.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and then Reese kissed her cheek and breathed, “Good luck, Joss.”

“Thank you,” she whispered back, squeezed his hand, and joined Fusco and Quinn at the crosswalk just as the light changed.

Without meaning to, Cheyenne and Sam moved to flank Reese as they watched the two detectives cross the street and enter the federal building. Cheyenne didn’t know what Sam was thinking, but it was all he could do to hold himself back and wait.

Then the door of the federal building closed, and Root announced, “They’re clear.”

Sam, Reese, and Cheyenne heaved a collective sigh of relief.

“And your ride is here,” Mr. Finch added as a taxi pulled up to the curb.

The shotgun window rolled down, and the driver whistled and called, “ _¡Oye, jefe!_ ”

Grinning in apparent recognition, Reese clapped Sam and Cheyenne on the shoulder and ran to get the door for them. Once they were in, he slid in after them and shut the door, and the taxi drove off.

“How’s it going, Fermin?” Reese asked.

“Better!” answered the driver. “Maria and Jorge, they love it here. They say it’s so much better than in Cuba. They’re learning English, you know? And Jorge, man, he’s so smart. He’s doing really good in school. Maria got a job, too; she works from home, tutoring in Spanish online. You know, we’re not getting rich, but… we’re gonna make it.”

As Reese continued to exchange pleasantries with the driver, Sam’s pocket telephone buzzed. She looked at it and then showed Cheyenne the text from Mr. Finch: _Driver: Fermin Ordoñez. We saved him from the Estonian mob last year, and Det. Carter helped get his family out of Cuba._

“So where to?” Ordoñez asked.

They weren’t far from Reese’s apartment in Chinatown, but instead Reese gave an address much further uptown. Cheyenne didn’t recognize it but thought it might be in Morningside Heights.

“Surprised you’re working the night shift,” Reese added as Ordoñez turned onto a cross street that would lead (Cheyenne thought) to West Side Highway.

“Another driver has been out sick all week,” Ordoñez explained. “And I don’t mind the extra hours—we got a new baby coming.”

“Congratulations! Boy or girl?”

“It’s a boy, and we already decide what we’re gonna name him: Juan José Haroldo.”

“Awww,” said Root in Cheyenne’s ear.

“Well, speaking only for myself,” said Reese, “I’m honored.”

The conversation died down at that point, and Root had only occasional updates about HR’s ongoing search for Quinn. Some of the units in Queens had started searching hospitals, and the mole at the RTCC had tried and failed to remotely access Simmons’ and Quinn’s telephones. But whatever magic Root and Mr. Finch were working with the computers still held, and no one had yet worked out that Miss Carter and Fusco had delivered Quinn to the FBI.

As the taxi approached its destination, all three of its passengers reached for their wallets at the same time. Sam took several bills out of hers and passed them to Cheyenne, who added several more before passing the bundle to Reese, who added his own contribution before folding the stack in half. When Ordoñez stopped outside a ratty-looking building, Reese passed the money through the window between the seats.

“Keep the change,” Reese said, and the three of them got out while Ordoñez was still goggling at their gift.

“So now what?” Sam asked once they were all on the sidewalk.

“Now?” Reese walked up to a door that was mostly hidden behind posters and unlocked it. “We go in.”

At first glance, even the interior of the building looked abandoned. Reese switched on a light once the door was shut again, but the few buzzing lights that came on were dim and sickly green, giving just enough light for the three of them to navigate the stairs. Cheyenne knew better than to take this place at face value, however, and sure enough, at the top of the stairs, Reese unlocked another door that opened into an apartment almost as richly furnished as his own, though smaller.

“What is this place?” Sam asked as Cheyenne hunted for somewhere to hang his hat.

“Another safe house,” Reese answered, entering a code on a keypad to lock the door from the inside. “It’s just for us—we never bring numbers here. Finch got it for me after the first time I got shot.”

“You’ll be safe there until morning,” Mr. Finch added as Cheyenne sat down on the sofa, suddenly weary. “So we’re pulling out of the RTCC feeds and restoring communications. Whatever HR’s troops do next, it’s too late for them to rescue Quinn.”

“Checkmate,” Cheyenne murmured and promptly fell asleep.

* * *

[1] The bugle call “Boots and Saddles” was used in the US Cavalry to signal troops to mount and form the line before riding out of the fort or camp. Like Reveille, the title could also be used to refer to the time when the bugle call was to be sounded for a scheduled troop movement. Having spent a good chunk of his adult life as a cavalry scout, Cheyenne would likely think in those terms in a situation like this.

[2] “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead” was one of the first running gags on _Saturday Night Live_ , which premiered while news shows were breathlessly reporting on Franco’s last lingering illness.


	12. Segue

Cheyenne woke in an unfamiliar bed in a twilit room he didn’t recognize. At first he wasn’t sure what he’d dreamed or where he was, but then he saw both his gun belt and his shoulder holster on the nightstand beside him and realized that he was still fully dressed in the new suit from Mr. Finch. That woke him up enough to conclude that he must still be in Reese’s hideout in Morningside Heights. Then Sam walked in, which was confirmation enough.

“Mornin’,” he said groggily.

“Evening,” she corrected and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’ve been out cold all day. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, have you?”

He sighed and sat up. “Reckon I haven’t, not since I told Collier ’bout the Little Bighorn.”

“Nightmares?”

He nodded.

“Ever talk to anyone about it?”

“Once. Army tried to railroad Marc Reno for not gettin’ to Custer in time. I hate the man, but I couldn’t stand by and let ’em do that to ’im when I was the only white man who saw the whole battle.” He shook his head. “Col. Bell tried to twist everything I said, but Gen. Sheridan believed me. Not sure anyone else would, though.”

“About what happened or about the nightmares?”

“Well… both, I reckon, but mostly about what happened. Dull Knife was the one who ordered me bound to my horse to watch the fight, and he remembered me later, but I couldn’t exactly call _him_ as a witness.”

She nodded. “No wonder you’ve got PTSD.”

He frowned. “I’ve got what?”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder. It wasn’t called that until the 1970s. I think in the Civil War, it was called soldier’s heart.”

His frown deepened. “I’ve never had heart trouble.”

“That’s just one of the ways it can manifest. Basically, when you’ve been through something seriously traumatic—and being forced to watch Custer’s last stand _definitely_ qualifies—your brain doesn’t always bounce back from that, and one of the most common symptoms in veterans is nightmares. It can happen to anyone, especially people who’ve seen combat. Reese is pretty much a textbook case. I think Finch has it, too, at least about Root.”

“And you?”

She shrugged. “Never cared enough.”

He was reasonably sure that wasn’t true, but if she did have this… PTST or whatever it was, the Axis II whatchamacallit probably made it look different. He _could_ easily believe that she didn’t have nightmares about combat.

“Anyway.” She slapped his knee to emphasize the change of subject. “Carter’s just about done swearing out warrants, and Reese is almost back with his car. Finch is throwing a party at the new safe house to celebrate. And he wants _you_ there specifically.”

He ducked his head and smiled a little. “Don’t feel like I did much.”

“What, besides coming up with the escape route and acting the hell out of that scene on the boat?” When his embarrassed smile grew a little, she leaned forward. “Dude, you got the biggest cockroach of them all. Quinn was the boss, but Simmons was the brains, and he’d already managed to escape two federal dragnets. The Feds will have the last handful of foot soldiers within the hour, but if you hadn’t shot Simmons, odds are he’d still be out there gunning for you and Carter and Reese. And there’s a very good chance he’d have managed to kill at least one of you.”

“Did Root tell you that?” he asked, remembering the plea she’d passed on from the Machine.

She shook her head. “She didn’t have to. I heard enough from Fusco.”

He nodded; he’d forgotten that Fusco had been undercover with HR before the first round-up.

“Root won’t be there tonight, by the way,” she continued. “Finch still doesn’t want her leaving the library, but she says the Machine wants her there anyway, at least until Samaritan’s dealt with. I think Finch is giving her a cupcake with her tea or something so she doesn’t totally miss out.”

“She was a lot more help than I thought she’d be.”

“Yeah, me, too. I mean, I know how she works when she’s off the leash, but she was remarkably not-weird last night.”

“Except for that joke she kept tryin’ to make….”

“Oh, the Francisco Franco thing?”

“Yeah. What was that all about?”

“I’ll explain while we eat.” She slapped his knee again. “Fresh coffee’s almost ready, and Reese is bringing us both steak and eggs.”

He smiled and threw back his covers. “Sounds great.”

* * *

_At least it’s a small gathering_ , John thought as he looked around the living room of the new safe house. He knew how to schmooze, but he’d never really been a party person. Apparently, neither were Fusco and Bodie, who were off in a corner discussing baseball. If the Homicide Task Force had been throwing this party, odds were that the three of them would have spent the whole evening griping about the food and not talking to anyone but each other. (Well, Bodie might not be picky about the food—John still remembered the _raw calf liver_ comment. That was an Apache thing, it seemed.)

But fortunately for all concerned, they were not at the Eighth Precinct. Finch was the host, and not only were the food and drinks guaranteed to be good, so was the company. Laskey had brought his fiancée Anya, with Finch’s blessing, but they were the only people here John didn’t know well enough to be comfortable with. John thought he knew the real reason Finch had let Anya come, but he didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Otherwise, it was just the team. Zoe had said she had a previous engagement, and it was a school night, so Lee Fusco and Taylor Carter were staying home.

His thoughts were interrupted by Shaw crowing, “And here she is, the woman of the hour!” and opening the door to let Carter enter like a rock star. And oh, did she look like a rock star! Gone was the street-duty uniform; gone were the evidence-hunting civvies; gone was the grief-worn anger that had haunted her for the last six months. She had her rank restored and was back in one of the suits she used to wear for that role, and her smile at everyone’s cheering applause was so bright, John would swear she was actually glowing.

The knot in his chest that had formed when he’d found out she was going after HR alone finally began to loosen. She was here and Simmons was dead. The world couldn’t afford to lose her, and it wouldn’t be losing her tonight. And neither would he.

Carter made a little speech thanking everyone for their help and managed to thoroughly embarrass Bodie in the process, though in an _Aw, shucks, ma’am_ sort of way and not a _Shaw has no filters_ way. She even got Fusco to blush a little in the same way. Then came a round of toasts, mainly to friendship and teamwork and their many benefits; if anyone but John noticed that Bodie drank them with coffee instead of champagne, they didn’t mention that or the fact that Fusco was drinking his with club soda.

At the end of the toasts, Laskey said, “Guess I have to find a new FTO now.”

Carter laughed and shook her head. “You’re turnin’ into a better cop than you think you are, Laskey. You’ll be all right.”

“But on that subject, Officer,” said Finch, “I have a gift for you and Anya.”

Laskey blinked and set down his empty glass. “For us?”

Finch drew two manila envelopes out of his inside jacket pocket. “Your role in this whole affair may… lead to tensions within the NYPD and within the Russian community, or at least that part of it still sympathetic to the Bratva. As Det. Carter says, you have a good future ahead of you—but perhaps _not_ as Mr. and Mrs. Mike Laskey or even as Mr. and Mrs. Mikhail Lesnichy.” He handed one envelope to each future spouse. “Inside you’ll find a new identity, even better constructed than the federal Witness Protection Program, and enough money to establish yourselves in another state. Where you go and what you do there is entirely up to you, but I do recommend that you leave town at once, destroy your phones… and don’t look back.”

John had seen this speech coming, but given the urgency, he wondered whether Finch had gotten their numbers that afternoon. It would make sense—as the only Russian member of HR not in federal custody, Laskey could easily be seen as a traitor—but if it were so, Finch hadn’t said anything to John, and John wasn’t sure what that meant.

Laskey swallowed hard and looked at Anya, who put a hand on his arm and said, “Honestly, I think my parents would be glad to be rid of me. But they’d probably be happier this way than if we got shot up by Yogorov’s guys.”

Laskey sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I did tell Mom not to worry too much if I disappeared for a while—after that thing with Terney, I… kinda said my goodbyes just in case. Got a lot of friends and family I’ll miss, but… but yeah, it’s better this way.” He looked down at the envelope in his hand and back at Finch. “Thank you, sir. We’ll leave now.”

Fusco proposed one last toast to their health and happiness, and after a round of handshakes, the couple did leave.

“I hope they have sense enough not to go home to pack,” Finch murmured as John walked over to him.

“Something you forgot to tell me, Finch?” John asked softly.

“No. Their numbers came in after I had already prepared the new identities and agreed to let Anya attend the party. We both know Mikhail Lesnichy could never have the fresh start he needs if he were to remain here in New York, with or without a threat to his life. Knowledge of the threat only increased the urgency of sending Mike and Anya on their way.”

John nodded his understanding.

“Hey, Shaw,” Fusco said. “Our historical friend here says he actually met Abner Doubleday.”[1]

“Who?” Shaw asked, confused, at the same moment a delighted Finch exclaimed, “Really?!”

Bodie grinned. “Yeah, I’ve served under Col. Doubleday a couple times.”

Finch hobbled over to join the baseball talk, and Shaw, plainly more baffled by Finch’s interest than by the unanswered question of who Doubleday was, followed. Bodie shot a wink at Carter, who chuckled and shook her head.

John caught her eye and mouthed _Coffee?_

_Please_ , she mouthed back.

He motioned toward the kitchen with his head, and she followed him.

“Think I like that look better than what you wore to the nightclub,” he confessed with a wink and got out two mugs.

She chuckled again, a deeper, richer sound than the flirty giggle she’d used while pretending to seduce Bodie the night before, although it crinkled her nose and made her look ten years younger. “What, this old thing?”

“Victory. It suits you.” He poured the coffee and added cream to hers.

She laughed. “More like I’ve been up for thirty-six hours and I’m punchy as hell.”

He smiled and handed her coffee to her, and they clinked mugs and drank.

Then she looked him over. “You get any sleep?”

He nodded. “Few hours. So did Shaw. Bodie slept all day.”

“So why didn’t you?” And there was the interrogator’s look and the genuine compassion in her quiet voice, both backed now by two years’ friendship.

He sighed and looked down at his coffee. He’d had plenty of practice in resisting interrogations—resisting _her_ interrogations—but right now, he wasn’t sure he wanted to give her a fight. By the same token, though, he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it.

“John?” she pressed.

“I had a nightmare about you.”

He wasn’t sure he’d actually said the words aloud until she set her mug on the counter and moved closer to him. “What sort of nightmare?”

Well, there was no getting out of it now. “Simmons was still alive. We were just leaving the Third Precinct. He came outta nowhere and shot you—shot us both, actually. You bled out in my arms.”

She gasped. “Oh, _John._ ”

“It was worse than losing Jessica.” His voice was shaking, but he couldn’t stop at this point. “I’d promised to come get her, but Mark wouldn’t grant my request for leave. I didn’t get back to the States until two months after she died.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

He finally looked up and into her eyes. “But this time, I was there, I was two steps behind you, and I still couldn’t save you.”

“It was a _nightmare_ ,” she insisted. “Simmons is dead—I saw him in the morgue. I’m still alive. We’re both okay.”

“Joss….”

“No. Nuh-uh. You do _not_ get to feel guilty about something that never happened and never will. I am right here, John.”

He set his mug beside hers and brushed her hair back from her face with one trembling hand, as if she were as fragile as one of Mom’s old porcelain dolls.

And then she stepped closer and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m right here,” she repeated in a whisper. “And we’ve got time. Whatever comes next, we can figure it out together.”

He let his eyes close as he returned the hug. “Together,” he whispered back, as much a promise as anything he’d ever told her.

* * *

Cheyenne was grateful to get home when the party broke up that evening and even more grateful that Mr. Finch gave everyone the rest of the week off. The few numbers that came in, mostly late shockwaves from the HR bust, were ones that could be handled with an anonymous tip to the honest lawmen in town. Cheyenne hadn’t realized how badly his sleep had become disrupted until his body responded to the sudden lack of stress by demanding that he make up for lost time. He might even have come down with a touch of flu, but he wasn’t about to call Sam to find out for sure.

Once everyone had recovered, however, Mr. Finch summoned his team to the library early Monday morning. “We don’t have a new number,” he confessed once they were all assembled, “but I thought perhaps we could act before the danger is imminent for once.”

“You talkin’ about Claypool?” Sam asked.

“Indeed, Miss Shaw.” Mr. Finch taped up a picture of a man about his own age, though considerably heavier-set and with salt-and-pepper hair and beard. “I’ve managed to locate Mr. Claypool, although I’m reasonably certain that Vigilance has not, considering that the Machine has yet to give us his number. He’s not listed in the hospital’s admission records, but I was able to locate his medical records in their database, and he’s been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme.”

“What’s the prognosis?”

“Terminal.” Something in the grim way Mr. Finch said that made Cheyenne even more convinced that Mr. Finch knew Claypool somehow. “And especially knowing what we do, I would like very much for him _not_ to have to spend Thanksgiving in the hospital.”

Reese nodded. “Well, Shaw’s cover is obvious.”

“Yes, I’ve already taken the liberty of establishing Miss Shaw as Dr. Anne Moore, a recent transfer from New York General whose specialty is clinical oncology and palliative care.” Mr. Finch handed Sam a hospital employee badge. “You, Mr. Reese, will go in as John Campbell, evaluating the security system for a potential overhaul—that may not give you direct access to Claypool’s room, but it should allow you to go almost anywhere else Claypool could go. And you, Mr. Bodie….”

“Hope you don’t expect me to play at bein’ a doctor, sir,” Cheyenne said. “I don’t know as I could even give someone a shot.”

Mr. Finch smiled. “Don’t worry, it’s not a technical position, but it is one where your strength will be an asset.” He handed Cheyenne a hospital employee badge that read _Jim Moore – Orderly._

Cheyenne nodded. During his career as a civilian scout for the cavalry, he’d had to help out in post hospitals a few times after a bad ambush or during an epidemic, so he knew more or less what being an orderly entailed. Then he noticed the surname. “Are Sam and I supposed to be brother an’ sister?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Finch. “I thought it the easiest way to account for your both starting at the same time and sharing a vehicle.”

Sam’s lips pursed as she looked Cheyenne over. “TBI,” she proclaimed. “Career military, but medically retired after you caught an IED in Helmand Province.”

“Afghanistan,” Reese explained before Cheyenne could ask. “Shaw can brief you on the way over if you’re likely to run into any veterans on Claypool’s floor.”

“I’ll check,” said Mr. Finch and limped back to his desk. “Thank you, Miss Shaw.”

“Why do I have to be medically retired?” Cheyenne asked.

“It explains why you’re working as an orderly and why you can’t drive,” Sam answered.

“Oh.” Cheyenne considered that, and it did make sense. “Well, if it helps any, I’ve served most often with the 7th Cavalry.”

“In that case, change it to Baghdad,” said Reese. “The 7th Cav didn’t deploy to Afghanistan until this time last year, so you’d still be at the VA getting treatment for a TBI severe enough to cause medical retirement.”

Mr. Finch nodded as he typed. “There don’t appear to be any recent veterans currently admitted to that hospital, but these sorts of details do make for a stronger cover story.”

“And I can tell you all about Baghdad, just in case,” Sam told Cheyenne.

Cheyenne nodded. “Thanks, I’d like to hear.”

“Your shift starts at 8,” said Mr. Finch. “Mr. Reese, your appointment is at 8:30. Oh, and….” He got up and fetched a bag from the bookshelves, then brought it to Cheyenne.

Cheyenne accepted it with a confused frown. “What’s this?”

“Your uniform. Normally the hospital would provide one for you, but under the circumstances, especially since you don’t have the right shoes….”

Even more baffled, Cheyenne opened the bag and pulled out a summer-weight short-sleeved V-necked shirt of a particularly awful shade of seafoam green. There was a also a pair of pants in the same fabric.

Sam cackled at the look on his face. “You are going to _hate_ wearing scrubs.”

“I don’t see how I _can_ wear ’em in this weather,” Cheyenne admitted. “It’s still above freezin’, but with the mist an’ all….”

“Oh, you are allowed to wear long underwear underneath,” said Mr. Finch. “There’s a set in there, and a jacket to wear outside.”

Cheyenne dug in the bag and found those things as well as a pair of clodhoppers that wouldn’t even cover his ankles. He had a sinking feeling that Sam was right.

“Better go change,” said Reese, checking his watch. “You won’t have time once you get there. But take your street clothes with you—we may need your hat to block cameras.”

Grumbling internally, Cheyenne went to the privy to change clothes. The longjohns weren’t so bad, but the shoes felt heavy and awkward, and the uniform didn’t look like the sort of thing one ought to be wearing in public, although he did belatedly remember people wearing something like this at the hospital he’d been taken to on his first day here. Worst of all, if the jacket wasn’t allowed while he was working inside, he had no way to conceal his shoulder holster; he had to settle for clipping his boot holster to the waistband of his longjohns. Then he clipped on his name badge, tucked his telephone into his breast pocket, packed up his other clothes, studied his reflection in the mirror, and sighed heavily as he pulled on the new jacket. It wasn’t as bad as finding out about the Machine, or even as bad as having to drive that one time… but _mankind_ , he did not want to do this.

“Let’s go, Princess!” Sam called from outside and pounded on the door. “What’s the matter, you fall in?”

Growling, Cheyenne picked up the bag and yanked the door open. “Didn’t they teach you manners in the Marines?”

“Nope, just how to kill people.” She poked his side. “And if you’re gonna be grumpy around the patients, you’d better come up with a better reason than the fact that you hate what you’re wearing.”

“Who says I’ll be grumpy around the patients?” he asked, slinging the bag over his shoulder and following her back down the hall.

“Look, I never made a convincing doctor even when I was one. So _one_ of us needs to have a decent bedside manner.”

“I won’t go pokin’ sore-headed bears, if that’s what you mean.”

Reese laughed as they came around the corner. Then the three of them said their goodbyes to Mr. Finch, gave Bear a few farewell scratches, and headed down to their cars. Once they were all connected by telephone and Sam had found a white coat somewhere in her car, Reese went one way to pick up doughnuts for the security staff while Sam and Cheyenne went straight to the hospital, but as she’d promised, Sam told Cheyenne as many details as she could remember about her time in Iraq, and Reese added some reminiscences of his own. Cheyenne still wasn’t sure he could locate Iraq on a map—it had still been part of the Ottoman Empire in his day—but at least he’d _heard_ of Baghdad before. And when they got to the hospital, Sam showed him the infamous clip of “Baghdad Bob” desperately declaring that American troops were nowhere near the city as American tanks rolled past behind him, so he could understand that joke if anyone made it.

Inside, Sam and Cheyenne were directed up to the cancer ward, where they were assigned lockers in rooms off the staff lounge. Cheyenne had just enough time to stow his bag and down a cup of coffee before he was put to work delivering breakfast to the patients, and by then he was able to keep up appearances and chat pleasantly with the patients and their families, even though he still wasn’t comfortable walking around in glorified pajamas and the shoes, while they didn’t pinch or hurt, still felt all wrong on his feet and squeaked if he wasn’t careful. For her part, Sam started her initial rounds and kept up appearances reasonably well herself, at least from what little Cheyenne could see and hear.

He was only about a quarter of the way through with his deliveries when she said into her phone, “Reese, Claypool has a three-man security detail. At a guess, I’d say they’re Secret Service—definitely government.”

“On his door or in the room?” Reese asked.

“Just on his door, looks like. I’ll find out for sure when I go in for rounds in a minute.”

“If they’re just on his door, we should be able to take him out through the ceiling. I’ll make sure the crawlspace can take his weight.”

Cheyenne tuned them out in favor of continuing his deliveries. He had less to talk to each patient about than Sam did, though, and some of the patients were barely awake and not in a talkative mood, so he soon passed her and ended up getting to Claypool’s room ahead of her. The fact that the rooms on either side of Claypool’s were empty and that there were only storage closets and a break room across the hall shortened Cheyenne’s route.

“Mornin’,” he said with a nod as he walked up to the guards and lifted the cover from Claypool’s plate for their inspection. “Did you need to taste-test, or is this enough?”

One of the guards, a young dark-haired fellow whose nametag read _Easton_ , glanced at the plate and then up at Cheyenne with the air of not being used to being shorter than anyone. “I haven’t seen you on this floor before,” he said in the same tone as certain commanders used to demand that Cheyenne call them _sir_.

“Don’t reckon you have,” Cheyenne returned, not about to give this pup the satisfaction of his taking offense, and covered the plate again. “Just transferred over from New York General. Today’s my first day.”

Easton frowned. “Why would an orderly transfer between hospitals?”

“My kid sister.” Cheyenne nodded down the hall toward where Sam was just coming out of a patient room. “I went into the Army to pay for her schoolin’, but I got my bell rung pretty good by an IED while I was in Baghdad. So now she looks after me. We’re a package deal—where she goes, I go.”

“What outfit were you with?”

“First Squadron, Seventh Cavalry.” Cheyenne only just remembered Reese’s warning to say _squadron_ instead of _battalion_.

Easton’s eyes narrowed, but he let Cheyenne pass.

“Mornin’, Mr. Claypool,” Cheyenne said as he entered the room, noticing as he did so that the guards stayed outside and that there was only one bed in the room.

Claypool, who’d been staring out the window, roused and looked over at Cheyenne. “Oh, good morning.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Haven’t I seen you in _Hell Is for Heroes_?”

Cheyenne smiled and set the tray on Claypool’s over-bed table; he’d gotten this question before and knew how to answer. “You’re thinkin’ of _None but the Brave_ , but that was a little before my time.”

“N-no, it-it was set in the European Theater, I remember that much. What was that movie….”

“ _The Dirty Dozen_?”

“Yes!”

“That was before my time, too.”[2]

Claypool smiled like Cheyenne had passed a test. “So you’re new here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your sister? She’s….”

“A doctor. You’ll be meetin’ her pretty quick.”

“I see, yes. And you’ll be here all day?”

“You get off at 6,” Mr. Finch stated.

“Well, yes, sir, at least until 6,” Cheyenne answered Claypool. “Is there somethin’ you needed?”

Claypool shot a wary look at the door and beckoned Cheyenne closer. When Cheyenne sat down on the edge of the bed, Claypool whispered, “There’s a woman who comes to see me. She says she’s my wife.”

Cheyenne frowned a little. “You’re sayin’ she’s not?” he asked at the same volume.

Claypool shook his head. “I _remember_ my wife—and believe me, as badly corrupted as my file system is, that’s saying something.” He gestured toward his forehead with a rueful chuckle. “Some things I can’t remember no matter how hard I try. But I remember Diane… including the fact that she died two years ago. I buried her on June 12, 2011.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mr. Finch.

Cheyenne raised his chin in understanding. “So who’s this other woman?” 

Claypool shook his head again. “I dunno. Dunno. I’d never seen her before I came to this hospital two or… three months ago.”

“What does she want?”

“That I do know, or think I know, but…” Claypool winked. “You don’t have the clearance for that, friend.”

“The name’s Jim,” Cheyenne lied.

Claypool chuckled again. “Don’t bother. I won’t remember it.”

“So you want me to keep this phony away from you, is that it?”

“Yes, or ask your sister to order no visitors.”

Cheyenne nodded once and considered. “I can’t make any promises. I’ve got my work to tend to, so I can’t stay, and I don’t know what kind of pull my sister has. But I’ll see Anne gets the message, at least.”

Claypool nodded. “Thank you.” Then his eyes glazed over slightly and drifted away from Cheyenne’s face.

“Mr. Claypool?”

Claypool focused on Cheyenne again, but his eyes remained somewhat vacant. “Have you hard-coded the essential values yet?” he asked at a more conversational volume.

“Uh, yes, sir,” Cheyenne replied, deciding it was safer to play along than not. “Brought your breakfast, too.”

“Breakfast!” That brought Claypool back to himself with another head-shaking chuckle. “Of all the things for me to forget, I wouldn’t have thought mealtimes would be one of them.”

Cheyenne smiled, got up, and rolled the table over Claypool’s bed. “You may not want to remember this meal after you’ve eaten it.”

“Oh, tell me about it. Hospital food, am I right? It’s even worse than hospital coffee.”

“Well, anything’s passable when you’re hungry enough.”

“Given some of the things I ate as a starving student at MIT, I’m inclined to agree. Mystery meat in the cafeteria?” Claypool shuddered theatrically.

MIT… Mr. Finch had gone to MIT, from what Reese had said. But Cheyenne didn’t have time to ask more questions or even to take his leave. He could already hear Easton grilling Sam at the door.

“What’s your specialty?” Easton was asking as Cheyenne walked up behind him silently.

“Clinical oncology and palliative care,” Sam shot back. “And if you don’t get out of my way, my big brother is going to make you wish you had.” And she looked up at Cheyenne pointedly at the same moment he deliberately let his shoes squeak.

Easton almost jumped out of his skin and spun to glare at Cheyenne, forgetting that his eye line was about level with Cheyenne’s chin.

Cheyenne ignored him. “Honey, Mr. Claypool’s just started his breakfast. He may not want to talk to you right now.”

“I do, I do!” Claypool piped up from the bed.

Sam raised an eyebrow at Cheyenne, who shrugged his own eyebrows and stood back to usher her in. Then she shot the same look at Easton, who got out of the way with far less grace. As she passed, Cheyenne put a protective hand on her shoulder.

Claypool looked from Sam to Cheyenne and back several times, plainly not sure whether or not he should laugh. He settled for asking, “You’re really brother and sister?”

“Our father remarried,” Sam answered. “I take after my mom; Jim takes after his.”

“Anne, this is Arthur Claypool,” Cheyenne said. “I’m not supposed to stay for this part, right?”

Sam looked up at him and smiled with a visible effort. “I can take it from here, thanks.”

“All right. If you need me, though, just holler. I’ll be back in a few minutes, Mr. Claypool,” Cheyenne added.

Claypool’s mouth was full, but he nodded and waved his fork in acknowledgment. So Cheyenne left, closing the door behind him, and smiled at the guards as he passed.

While Claypool told Sam he thought his remaining time was closer to one or two months than to four and Cheyenne delivered the next tray to the room two doors along, Reese asked, “Any progress on the mystery woman, Finch?”

“Not so far,” Mr. Finch replied. “Arthur and Diane Claypool married more than twenty years ago, but the only image I’ve been able to find of Diane is of a recent Maryland driver’s license, issued within the last year. I’ve also been unable to find confirmation of his assertion that Diane died two years ago, but the fact that he remembers the date of her funeral would suggest that it’s true. If so, the fact that this other woman has been able to replace Diane’s digital footprint so completely is troubling.”

“Maybe she’s like that guy we tracked to Owen Island this spring—Declan or whatever his real name was.”

“Oh, I hope not, Mr. Reese. One identity-stealing serial killer is quite enough for one lifetime, let alone one year. Of course, one major difference is that Declan tended to avoid anyone who knew his victims.”

“That just shows she doesn’t know how bad the memory loss actually is. And if he’s fooled her about that….”

“Then there’s a very good chance she hasn’t gotten what she wants from him, whether it’s Samaritan or some other secret he learned while working for the NSA.”

“So we need to get him out of here before she comes in today.”

“Got our extraction route yet?” Sam asked.

“Eh, I’m still on the first floor,” Reese admitted. “I’ve got an idea, but I need to make sure it’ll work.”

“The guards are only in the hall,” Cheyenne murmured, pushing his cart down to the end of the hallway.

“And visiting hours are only between 2 and 5 in the afternoons,” Mr. Finch added. “That gives us some breathing room.”

Sam hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe, but not much. I can order no visitors on the grounds of Claypool needing to rest, but I’d need a new PET scan to justify that.”

“Can that wait ’til I’ve got the dishes collected?” Cheyenne asked.

“Yeah, it’ll probably be a couple of hours before there’s an opening for the PET machine.”

“I don’t think we need to go that route,” said Reese. “I just found the weight limit specs. We _can_ get him out through the crawlspace. The hard part’s gonna be getting him onto the elevator—there’s a hatch in the top of the car, but the crawlspace doesn’t connect to the shaft.”

Cheyenne turned his cart around and headed back the way he’d come. “What about the laundry cart?”

“Oh, perfect,” said Sam. “We can even take him out the back entrance so we don’t attract attention in the parking lot. Okay, Reese, how long will it take you to get up here?”

“I… don’t really do tight spaces,” Reese admitted quietly.

“Ugh, _fine_ , I’ll do it, then. Cheyenne, we’ll take him through the bathroom ceiling.”

“All right,” said Cheyenne. “Give me an hour.”

“If he doesn’t remember you,” Mr. Finch chimed in, “tell him Harold Wren sent you.”

“Yes, sir.” That instruction answered a lot of questions and raised more, but at least Cheyenne understood it.

Then Reese started asking Mr. Finch about details of the security system, and Cheyenne finally remembered he could mute his earpiece. That made it much easier to focus on getting the dishes collected, helping a few patients to the privy and back, and fending off a few invitations to dinner (or worse) from the nurses.

“You’ve got plans?” Easton echoed skeptically after overhearing one of Cheyenne’s refusals near Claypool’s room.

“Well, I have!” Cheyenne replied and then decided to lie like a rug. “Anne wants me to watch the game with her tonight—she likes the Panthers; I like the Patriots. We’ve got a week’s laundry ridin’ on it.”

“ _And_ dinner at Delmonico’s,” Sam added as she passed on her way to the break room.

“Dinner at—I can’t afford that!” Cheyenne called after her. He’d only heard of Delmonico’s and had no idea what their prices were, but it was safe to assume that they weren’t easy to pay on an orderly’s salary.

“Then you’d better hope the Pats win!” Sam shot over her shoulder and disappeared into the break room before Cheyenne could protest further.

Claypool evidently heard that, because he was still laughing when Cheyenne came in to collect his tray.

“If I tell Uncle Beau about that, he’ll tan her hide,” Cheyenne mock-grumbled as he walked up to Claypool’s bed. Not that there was much chance of his telling Bret Maverick’s father anything, if he ever even met the man, but he was sure the source of Bret’s _my ol’ pappy always says_ sayings would be less than amused by the terms of a bet being changed that way.

Claypool laughed some more and wiped tears off his cheeks. “You two are a breath of fresh air.”

Cheyenne couldn’t help smiling at that. “Well, I know folks need their rest in a hospital, but they need to laugh, too. Like the Good Book says, ‘A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.’”[3]

Claypool’s chuckles turned rueful. “It’s just too bad laughter can’t cure brain cancer.”

Cheyenne rolled the table out of the way and made sure the guards weren’t watching, then sat down on the edge of the bed and lowered his voice. “We’re gonna get you out of here, Mr. Claypool.”

Claypool blinked, confused. “What, like… to a hospice care facility? I thought that was for when you only had a month left.”[4]

“We can’t wait that long. We’re gonna move you today, ’fore that woman comes back.”

“No, I… I need to see your SCI credentials….”

Cheyenne glanced at the door and lowered his voice further. “We work for Harold Wren.”

Claypool’s face lit up, but then his expression turned wary. “Describe him.”

“’Bout your height, but thinner. Spiky brown hair, blue eyes, glasses. Cleft in his chin, dimples when he smiles big enough. He’s a baseball fan, likes the A’s, the Cubs, and the Red Sox.”

“Where’s he from?”

“That I don’t know—he’s never said. He’s a very private person.”

Claypool seemed pleased with that answer but held up a finger. “If you really know Harold… who was his best friend in college?”

“Nathan Ingram,” Cheyenne answered and thanked God that Reese had already told him that.

“And where does Nathan live now?”

“He doesn’t. He was killed in the ferry bombin’ three years ago.”

“Describe _him_.”

Cheyenne shook his head. “I never met him. I only went to work for Mr. Wren this summer.”

Claypool sighed and relaxed. “Sorry for giving you the third degree.”

“Don’t be. You don’t know me, and you’ve got good reason to be suspicious. We don’t know who that woman is or who she’s workin’ for, or even whether she’s workin’ alone. I could be anybody.”

“Yes, but they’d really have to dig to have you mention _that_ name as part of a deep cover. I haven’t seen Harold since before I got married—in fact, I think the last time I saw him may have been Nathan and Olivia’s wedding.”

“Well, we’ll get you to ’im in time for lunch.”

Claypool smiled. “When do we leave?”

“I still gotta get these dishes back to the kitchen, but I’ll be back in about half an hour.”

“All right. I hope I still remember what we’re doing by then.”

Cheyenne smiled and stood. “I’ll remind you.” And he collected the tray and left.

* * *

[1] Often credited with inventing baseball.

[2] After _Cheyenne_ ended, Clint Walker co-starred in both _None but the Brave_ (1965) and _The Dirty Dozen_ (1967), both released before the birth year given for Cheyenne’s cover identities. (L. Q. Jones, who played Cheyenne’s sidekick Smitty in three of the first four episodes of that series, was in _Hell Is for Heroes_.)

[3] Proverbs 17:22a

[4] It’s actually six months or less—not that Cheyenne would know!


	13. When This You See

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “When this you see, remember me” was a common Victorian autograph rhyme.

Cheyenne ran into more delays on the rest of his route, but Sam saw him at several points and so knew what the holdup was. All the same, it was a relief to get the dishes delivered, check the location of the large wheeled bin that held the laundry, and duck into the staff lounge for another cup of coffee.

“You really need to turn your earwig back on,” Root’s voice said softly from the blind side of the coffee machine.

Somehow Cheyenne managed neither to jump nor to look around. “What are you doin’ here?” he murmured and punched the button to fill his cup.

“This is the only place where we can talk without being seen or overheard.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Harold was coming over anyway. I convinced him to bring me.”

“Why?”

“The woman who’s been calling herself Diane Claypool is the head of Project Northern Lights. Her codename is Control.”

“She’s after Samaritan?”

“Exactly. She doesn’t like the fact the Machine is, well… beyond her control. She seems to see Samaritan as the next best option—but she’s less likely to pursue Claypool if she thinks she has a chance to get the Machine back. So I’m here as a decoy.”

He frowned as he picked up his cup. “You think she knows you?”

She gave a little affirmative hum. “Not that we’ve met, but she knows who I am. I… made a bit of a mess in Washington while I was trying to find the Machine. She’s already sent her favorite assassin after me twice.”

He would have asked for more details, but he’d just taken a drink of coffee, and by the time he’d swallowed, he’d thought better of pressing the issue. Instead, he said, “And you’re sure she’ll take the bait.”

“Well, as sure as I can be. I’m posing as a member of Housekeeping, and I’ve already moved Claypool’s clothes into the bathroom for you. And Shaw made sure to let Easton overhear her complaining to one of the nurses about your still suffering some cognitive issues from the concussion in Baghdad, like your walking off in the middle of your shift a few times because you didn’t have anything to do for five minutes and forgot you were still on the clock. Easton’s never done any real field work before, and he’s prone to jumping to the wrong conclusions, especially when the false trail is strong enough. So when the two of you disappear after you help Claypool into the shower, he’ll most likely believe that you just wandered off and Shaw went to find you—at least, as long as I’m the one who goes in to turn off the shower after you’ve gotten Claypool out safely.”

“What about Reese?”

“Once you and Shaw get started, Mr. Campbell will get a call from his home office saying that the hospital’s board of administrators decided to award the contract to another company. He’ll meet you either on the elevator or in the laundry room.”

Cheyenne drained his cup, crushed it, and threw it away. “I don’t like your committing suicide like this.”

Root chuckled, although the tone was less condescending than usual. “You’re adorable. John said the same thing. So did Harold, except at much greater length. But it’s not suicide as long as I’ve got _her_ , and this really is your only chance of pulling this off.”

He sighed. “Well, I reckon I can’t talk you out of it at this point.”

She slid out from behind the machine and put a hand on his arm. “I know you don’t like me, but I do appreciate your concern, and I promise I’ll be fine. Seriously, though, turn your earwig back on. If you look distracted, it’ll sell the cognitive problems even better.” And before he could respond, she squeezed his arm and left.

Somehow he knew he’d never see her again. He wasn’t sure how that knowledge made him feel. But after a moment of not watching her go, he tapped his earpiece.

“Are you there, Mr. Bodie?” Mr. Finch asked immediately.

“Yes, sir,” Cheyenne answered. “Just talked to Root.”

“So I heard. I must confess that I am also deeply ambivalent about this situation—but if I hadn’t brought her with me, she probably would have escaped and found a way over here anyway.”

Sam walked into the lounge at that point. “You set with the security cameras, Finch?”

“Yes,” Mr. Finch answered. “I believe it would be best for Mr. Bodie to leave with Mr. Reese while you and I take Arthur in your car.”

“Works for me,” said Reese.

“Am I gonna have time to change while you two head thisaway?” Cheyenne asked Sam.

Sam considered, then shook her head. “No, not completely, but that’s all right. Helps sell the notion that you just left because you forgot what time it was. Wear your hat, though.”

Cheyenne nodded. He’d worn the black hat that morning, without the beaded band, so it wouldn’t look particularly distinctive. “Sure, I can do that.”

“Here.” She took off her white coat and handed it to Cheyenne. “Stick that in your bag for me. You can give it back when we meet up at the safe house.”

“Right. You saw where the laundry cart is?”

“Yeah, no problems. I’m gonna go up through the women’s locker room. Go ahead to Claypool’s room when you’re done here.”

“Got it.”

They separated, and Cheyenne folded Sam’s coat carefully on his way into the men’s locker room. Once he’d put it in his bag, he left the lounge area, stopped by the linen storage for a clean gown, and went back to Claypool’s room.

“You again?” Easton challenged as Cheyenne approached the guards. “What is it now?”

“Mr. Claypool said earlier as he’d like to get a shower this mornin’,” Cheyenne replied at a volume that would carry into the room and held up the folded gown as proof. “Got held up in the kitchen, but now I’m back.”

Easton looked over his shoulder at Claypool, who nodded and waved for Cheyenne to come in, so the guards grudgingly stood aside to let Cheyenne pass.

“Remind me what I’m supposed to be getting a shower for?” Claypool murmured as Cheyenne approached the bed.

“You’re not,” Cheyenne murmured back. “Anne’s takin’ you out through the bathroom ceiling.”

“Taking me where?”

“To see Harold Wren.”

Claypool drew a deep breath and nodded. “Right. Yes. Got it.”

“Do you need a wheelchair,” Cheyenne asked at a more conversational volume, “or do you think you can walk?”

Claypool held out his arm for support, which Cheyenne gave, and got up with a groan. “It’s not that far. I can walk.”

Cheyenne nodded once and stayed at Claypool’s elbow until they were both squeezed into the tiny privy and the door was shut. “Might want to go in there to get your clothes on,” he whispered then, nodding toward the shower.

Claypool nodded back and collected his clothes from the edge of the sink, where Root had left them. Then he stepped into the shower and drew the curtain, which made enough noise that the guards had probably heard it. Cheyenne set the clean gown on the sink and waited while Claypool dressed hurriedly, ducked out without opening the curtain, and sat down on the toilet to put on his shoes. After making sure Claypool didn’t need help with his shoelaces, Cheyenne collected the used gown and turned the shower on. Claypool had both shoes on and tied by the time Sam lifted a ceiling tile out of the way and popped her head through. Then Cheyenne steadied Claypool as he climbed up on the toilet and gave him a boost while Sam helped him from her end.

“Oh, this is fun,” Claypool whispered as his feet disappeared through the hole. “Nathan always comes up with the best pranks.”

“Stay close to me,” Sam cautioned softly and dropped the tile back into place. “And stay quiet.”

“Right, right.”

Confident they were on their way, Cheyenne picked up the used gown again and left. “Gonna take this on down to the laundry,” he told the guards as he passed. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“So far, so good,” Root said in his ear.

While Reese faked the call from his home office, Cheyenne strode quickly down the hall and tossed the used gown into the laundry cart, then went back to the locker room to collect his things.

“The security camera nearest the laundry cart is now on a loop,” Mr. Finch announced as Cheyenne shrugged into his jacket and put on his hat.

“I’ve got my gear,” Cheyenne reported and closed his locker. “Headed back to the cart.”

“Should we be considering fiberoptic cable for this?” Claypool mumbled from Sam’s end of the call. “With the volume of data we’re talking about, I’m not sure copper wires will give us enough bandwidth.”

Trying to figure out what that meant distracted Cheyenne enough that he nearly walked straight into one of the nurses in the lounge. After mutual apologies, she looked up at him in concern. “Jim? Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

“N-no, I’m just cold,” Cheyenne replied, deliberately fumbling the explanation, and shivered for effect. “You know how it is out here at night.”

“Out… here?”

“Yeah, the sand don’t hold the heat once the sun’s down. ’Scuse me,” he added, touched his hat to her, and hurried past before she could ask any more questions.

“Nicely done, Mr. Bodie,” said Mr. Finch. “Miss Shaw is nearly to the laundry cart.”

“So am I,” Cheyenne murmured, absently touching his hat to a couple more nurses in the hall, and rounded the corner into the open storage area where the cart was just in time to duck out of sight before the first nurse encountered the other two.

“Wait, Miss Shaw,” Mr. Finch ordered, and Cheyenne heard a slight clank and a soft “ _Shh!_ ” above him as Sam stopped Claypool.

“He was just here a minute ago,” one of the nurses was saying.

“Didn’t Dr. Moore say something about his having a TBI from his time in Iraq?” another asked.

The third groaned. “It’s bad enough when our patients have fugues….”

“Maybe one of the patients called him,” the first nurse suggested as the three of them passed the doorway of the storage area. “He was moving pretty fast, but I don’t think he could have gone as far as the nurses’ station….” Her voice faded with distance.

“Now, Mr. Bodie,” said Mr. Finch.

Cheyenne tossed his bag into the cart and reached up to lift the tile directly above it. Sam moved the tile and shooed Claypool through the opening first; Claypool, who was clearly having the time of his life, didn’t even wait for Cheyenne to offer him a hand before dropping onto the cart. Then Sam dropped through, and Cheyenne covered them with a sheet, put the tile back in place, and started pushing the cart toward the elevator.

“I’ll cover you,” said Root, and a second later, an alarm went off down the hall past Claypool’s room, followed by running footsteps headed away from Cheyenne.

“The elevator is ready,” said Mr. Finch as Cheyenne reached the end of the hall. “The security camera is in the back corner, to your right as you enter.”

Cheyenne pressed the Down button, shoved the cart into the car while the doors were still opening, and pressed the button for the service entrance on the first floor, then made sure to stand where his hat would block the camera as the car descended.

“Perfect position, Mr. Bodie. Mr. Reese?”

“I’m at the back door of the elevator,” Reese reported. “There’s no one here right now—Shaw, you might want to go ahead and get out of the cart now.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Root was saying as Sam climbed out of the cart on the opposite side from where Cheyenne was standing and then helped Claypool out. “I’m not used to cleaning hospitals—I-I-I must have pressed a button or something.”

“Where’s Harold?” Claypool whispered.

“Outside,” Sam whispered back and held a finger to her lips to remind him again to be quiet.

“So clumsy of me,” Root was still carrying on. “I hope I haven’t hurt anybody—I wouldn’t want to—” She started crying loudly, and Sam and Cheyenne rolled their eyes at each other.

“Well, at least Miss Groves didn’t take _your_ suggestion for a diversion, Miss Shaw,” said Mr. Finch. “We don’t need to bring the fire department into this.”

Cheyenne looked inquiringly at Sam, who rolled her eyes again and shook her head in a clear _Never mind_.

The elevator reached its destination then, and Cheyenne waited until Sam and Claypool had exited before pushing the cart out after them. Reese, as promised, was waiting just outside the elevator and helped Cheyenne steer the cart to an out-of-the-way place.

“This way, Mr. Claypool,” Reese whispered then and ushered Claypool toward the back door while Cheyenne grabbed his bag and followed with Sam.

“Now, who are you?” Claypool whispered back.

“My name is John. I work with Harold. He’s waiting outside.”

Claypool seemed to hesitate again, but Reese opened the door to reveal Mr. Finch standing beside Sam’s car about fifty yards away, and Claypool relaxed with a murmur of, “Finally, _someone_ I recognize,” and followed Reese out.

“The camera feeds down here are looped as well,” Mr. Finch said at a volume Cheyenne could hear only through his earpiece. “I’ll switch the loops off as soon as we’re in our vehicles.”

So Reese stepped out of Claypool’s way and let him hurry over to Sam’s car. “Harold!” Claypool called, though not loudly enough to carry far. “Thank God, it’s really you!”

Mr. Finch’s face softened in a fond smile. “Hello, Arthur.”

“How long has it been?”

“Quite some time.”

Claypool clasped Mr. Finch’s shoulders warmly, then looked back at Reese, Sam, and Cheyenne. “You know, I wasn’t sure whether to trust these kids you sent after me.”

Mr. Finch laughed.

“But I’m glad to know they were telling the truth—let’s see, it’s John….” Claypool hesitated over Sam’s name.

“Sam,” said Sam.

“I… think you said something else earlier, but never mind… and….” Claypool pointed to Cheyenne, eyebrows raised in question.

“Jim,” said Cheyenne.

“Oh, no, that’s all wrong. You don’t look like a Jim.”

Cheyenne grinned. “Well, how’s the name Cheyenne grab you?”

“Cheyenne,” Claypool repeated experimentally and looked away, considering. “Chey-enne,” he said again more slowly, the second syllable on a higher pitch, and then sang quietly, “Cheyenne, where will you be camping tonight?”[1]

Reese and Cheyenne looked at each other in shock.

“Arthur?” Mr. Finch prompted.

Claypool blinked and looked at him. “Mm? What?”

“We need to leave.”

“Yes. Right. Where are we going?”

“To a safe place,” Mr. Finch said and ushered Claypool into the back seat while Sam went around to the driver’s door.

Reese nodded to Cheyenne, who followed him further down the lot to John Campbell’s car. Once they were inside, however, they just sat for a moment, listening to Claypool chatter with Mr. Finch.

“I’ve got the weirdest feeling,” Reese breathed.

“Yeah,” Cheyenne replied. “So do I.”

They looked at each other, and Reese started the engine and drove off toward the library.

They’d been gone only a couple of minutes when there was a splash and the remaining hospital sounds stopped, which must have meant that Root had destroyed her phone. Cheyenne sighed and said a short, silent prayer for her. Meanwhile, Mr. Finch’s pointed questions had gotten Claypool talking about Samaritan, including the fact that it had been a project like the Machine but had been shut down before he could get it to work, the fact that he’d saved the core code on two backup drives because he’d viewed the artificial intelligence like a child, and the fact that Control hadn’t yet gotten him to confess to where the drives were. Mr. Finch then did some technical wizardry to make sure Claypool wasn’t carrying anything with a working GPS transmitter—there was one in Claypool’s medical alert button (the first time Cheyenne had ever heard of such a thing), but Claypool himself smashed that to get out the safe deposit box key that he'd hidden inside it—and then, after some detours and more technical wizardry to ensure they wouldn’t be pursued, Mr. Finch directed Sam to take him and Claypool to the bank where Claypool had hidden the drives. The alias Claypool had used, Ruediger Smoot, was apparently some sort of inside joke between himself and Mr. Finch, but Cheyenne decided not to try to work out what it meant.

For their part, Reese and Cheyenne made a different set of detours before stopping off at the library to pick up Bear and let Cheyenne change clothes. Cheyenne would have been perfectly happy to let Bear use the scrubs as a chew toy, but Reese talked him out of it. “You never know,” Reese reasoned. “We might need you to infiltrate another hospital one of these days.”

Cheyenne sincerely hoped not, but he didn’t say so.

Once both sets of errands had been completed and Sam had successfully gotten Mr. Finch, Claypool, and the drives out of the bank without incident, the two groups converged on the safe house. “Tomorrow we’ll move you to a small private hospital out of town,” Mr. Finch told Claypool as they left the bank, “but I’m sure you need to rest after the day you’ve had.”

Claypool chuckled. “Relax, Harold. It’s not like anyone was shooting at us.”

“No,” Mr. Finch said quietly. “Not today. But it would only have been a matter of time.”

Claypool chuckled again, more nervously. “What are you talking about?”

“Arthur… some very bad groups of people want to get their hands on Samaritan. The woman who’s been posing as Diane represents only one of them.”

And Mr. Finch proceeded to explain the threats from Control, Decima, and Vigilance, along with the existence of the Machine and the fact that the best of Claypool’s ideas were incorporated in the Machine’s design. It took most of the trip for Mr. Finch to make the case that the Samaritan drives needed to be destroyed, partly because Claypool’s ability to focus was slipping and partly because the news was so heartbreaking to him that he had trouble believing it. By the time they’d arrived, however, Claypool had finally come around to Mr. Finch’s way of thinking.

“Not an easy thing, to give up on a dream,” Cheyenne said sympathetically as the five of them went inside with Bear at their heels. “The one time I finally had enough saved up to buy my own ranch, I lost the herd to a disease in a matter o’ weeks and had to sell the place back to the bank ’fore I lost my shirt. I don’t think anyone can blame you for havin’ a hard time lettin’ go.”

“Not just a dream,” Claypool said mournfully, staring at the drives in his hands. “The culmination of my life’s work.”

“It’s an achievement few can equal,” said Reese, putting a hand on Claypool’s shoulder, “and even fewer can surpass.”

“And yet….” Claypool shook his head and said something in a language Cheyenne had never heard before.

“This too is meaningless,” Mr. Finch recited in English, “and a chasing after the wind.”[2]

Reese sent Bear to lie down out of the way. Then Claypool took a deep breath, covered his head with one hand, and sang something in that same unfamiliar language. Cheyenne couldn’t understand the words, but the sentiment was clear enough, and he removed his hat out of respect. Whatever the words meant, this was Claypool’s way of saying goodbye. When the song—or songs, more likely, given the length and the number of times Claypool paused—came to an end, Claypool took another deep breath, dropped the drives to the floor, and crushed them with his foot.

“ _Baruch Dayan Ha-Emet_ ,” Mr. Finch murmured.[3] “I’m so sorry, Arthur.”

Fighting tears, Claypool nodded his thanks and let Mr. Finch guide him to the armchair. Then as he sat down, he sniffled and said, “You’re limping. Are you hurt?”

“Oh, it’s an old injury that never healed right,” said Mr. Finch and sat down on the sofa. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Bear went over to Claypool and put his chin on Claypool’s leg. That startled Claypool a little, but then he started absently petting Bear’s head and murmuring something Cheyenne couldn’t make out.

“I’ll get a broom,” Reese volunteered quietly and started toward the kitchen—and then stopped.

Cheyenne followed his line of sight and straightened. Collier was standing at the far end of the dining room.

Realizing he’d been seen, Collier cleared his throat. “Sorry, am I intruding?”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Finch. “Please come in, Mr. Collier; I wanted you two to meet. This is Arthur Claypool. Arthur, Peter Collier.”

Claypool managed a wan smile. “Hello.”

Collier didn’t say anything for a moment as he limped into the living room, though his shock at confronting the reality of a man he’d considered a monster was plain to Cheyenne. Given the way Collier had gone after Sloan and Greenfield, Cheyenne could easily imagine his gunning down Claypool under other circumstances, but evidently spending five weeks under the care of Mr. Finch’s team had put a powerful damper on Collier’s thirst for revenge on all comers. When he finally reached the living room, all he said was, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Claypool. Sorry, I’d shake your hand, but….” He gestured with his right hand as best he could with his arm still in a sling.

“Don’t worry about it.” Claypool looked back at Mr. Finch and chuckled damply. “Are you running a home for convalescents now, Harold?”

Mr. Finch only smiled, but it reached his eyes.

“Listen, I know you said you were gonna move me… somewhere tomorrow—sorry, the rest didn’t stick—but… would you mind if… if I sit shiva here?”

“No, no, not at all,” Mr. Finch replied. “I’m afraid I can’t allow visitors—”

Claypool shook his head. “No, that’s all right. I understand. I just… don’t think I can move on until I can _move on_. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, perfectly.”

“I’ll go get that broom,” Reese murmured and headed toward the kitchen.

“I’ll mix up some aqua regia,” Sam murmured back. “See you on the roof.” And she grabbed her white coat out of Cheyenne’s bag and headed toward the chemical cabinet, which Cheyenne had only ever seen once.

That left only Cheyenne to stand guard over what remained of Samaritan, so Collier hobbled over to him. “Is that what I think it is?” Collier asked in a whisper, nodding toward the wrecked drives.

“Yeah,” Cheyenne confirmed.

“And she’s gonna dissolve it in acid?”

“That’s what it sounds like.” Cheyenne had known assayers who used aqua regia to test metal ores, so he had some idea of what it was, but he also knew it was mighty strong stuff and wasn’t comfortable trying to use it himself.

Collier nodded thoughtfully. “Do you think she’d mind if I help?”

Cheyenne shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her.”

“And, uh…” Collier glanced over his shoulder at Claypool briefly. “I’ll sit with him. We had Jewish neighbors when I was growing up, so I know what to do.”

Cheyenne raised his eyebrows. “You do remember who that is?”

“I do: a sick old man who has committed no crime. Hating him only hurts me, and it won’t bring Jesse back.”

Cheyenne smiled. “You’re all right, Collier.”

Collier returned the smile.

* * *

Once Samaritan’s remains were disposed of and everyone had had as much or as little lunch as he or she could stomach, Cheyenne and Reese left Mr. Finch, Sam, and Collier (and Bear) to get Claypool settled and headed back to Cheyenne’s apartment. It hadn’t been as draining a day as some they’d had, but that strange feeling they’d had since the hospital was still trailing them. For Cheyenne, it was akin to the itch he felt whenever it was time to move on, but overlaid with something else he couldn’t name; for Reese, it seemed to be a strong inclination not to leave Cheyenne alone. So Cheyenne invited Reese up for coffee, and Reese accepted.

As they walked into the apartment, Cheyenne gestured with his new bag of clothes. “I’ll just go put this in my closet and hang up my hat. Make yourself at home.”

Reese nodded. “Thanks.”

Cheyenne nodded back and went into his bedroom, but the moment he walked through the door, he was stopped short by a wave of dry heat—not from the central heating, but the blast-furnace heat of the high desert in high summer—and the smell of sagebrush and alkaline dust. The closet door rattled as wind whistled around it, and as he listened, a murmur of male voices and restless horses began to grow.

He leaned back through the doorway. “ _John!_ ” he whispered.

Reese came running. “What? What is it?”

Cheyenne motioned for silence and dropped his bag, his earpiece, and his pocket telephone on the bed. Then the two of them edged closer to the closet door, noting the sunlight shining under the door and the white dust blowing across the floor and listening to the voices from the other side. Once Cheyenne was sure he wasn’t just imagining things, he went quickly to his dresser to get bandanas for himself and Reese to tie over their faces before they opened the door, pistols in hand.

The closet itself hadn’t changed much; the arsenal was still there, as were Cheyenne’s clothes and his regular hat. He quickly put that on and gave the black hat to Reese to help shade his eyes. The back wall, however, was gone. In its place was a sunlit doorway that looked out at bright blue sky, a high dusty ridge above a broad valley—and the five bushwhacking bandits who’d sent Cheyenne hurtling through space and time, lined up along the crest of the ridge and peering down into the valley.

“You _sure_ you don’t see nothin’?” one of them asked. “It could be the sand’s dazzlin’ you.”

“I ain’t no greenhorn, Wilson,” another snapped. “Man that big, we’d see his body plain enough, even with the sun and the heat. He ain’t down there.”

Reese holstered his pistol and reached for the repeating rifles. Cheyenne holstered his own pistol and accepted the AR-15. Reese took the P-90 for himself. Then they walked forward to the edge of the doorway or portal or whatever one called such a thing, not passing through but able to have a clear field of fire.

“I still say you’re loco, Franklin,” said a third outlaw. “Did we or did we not shove him over that ledge?”

“Yes,” said the second. “But I’m tellin’ you—”

“Look, maybe he did manage to kill three of us with his bare hands, but no matter how many miracles he can pull off, a man don’t just disappear into thin air!”

“Lose something, fellas?” Reese asked casually.

Franklin and the third outlaw paused in mid-argument, looked at Reese, and then stared wide-eyed at both the portal and Cheyenne.

Then Franklin recovered enough to swear and draw. “There he is!” he bellowed, which got the other outlaws to turn around as well.

Reese and Cheyenne ducked out of the way as the outlaws fired; two shots went wild and three hit the far wall of the bedroom. But the outlaws had no cover, so when Reese and Cheyenne returned fire, they were able to kill all five in a matter of seconds.

As the echoes of the gunfire died away, Cheyenne took a deep breath and let it out again, then handed the AR-15 back to Reese. “I’d better change. Can you get everyone on the telephone?”

“Sure.” Reese hung up the rifles and stepped out of the closet to set up the party line.

Cheyenne was already wearing the boots and pants he’d arrived in, but he did take off his jacket, shoulder holster, and boot holster and the flannel shirt he’d worn to work. Then he put on the linen shirt he’d arrived in and his gun belt, checked his pockets, made sure the wallet from Mr. Finch was still in his jacket, and remembered that the money he’d had on arrival was still in his nightstand. After a moment’s hesitation, he started toward the bedroom to get it.

But Reese came back to the door, handed him his money, and held out his own pocket telephone. “You’re on speaker.”

“Well, folks, I don’t know how long this portal’s gonna stay open,” Cheyenne began as he tucked his money into his breast pocket, “but I didn’t want to leave without sayin’ goodbye. I don’t think I could have asked for better friends in a world I didn’t know. It’s been a pleasure knowin’ and workin’ with all of you.”

“Same to you, Cheyenne,” said Miss Carter.

“We’re gonna miss you, Cowboy,” Fusco added.

“Yes, indeed,” Mr. Finch agreed. “You’ve more than earned your keep with us, Mr. Bodie.”

Cheyenne smiled. “Oh, Mr. Finch, if there’s any pay I’ve got comin’, or if you get some money from sellin’ my things and there’s any left after payin’ my bills, I’d be obliged if you put it toward that scholarship fund you started with my royalty money.”

“I’ll be happy to.”

“And Sam, I’m sorry about dinner at Delmonico’s.”

“Oh, shut _up_ , Cheyenne,” Sam snapped, sounding perilously close to tears.

Cheyenne and Reese exchanged a smile at that.

Then Cheyenne held out a hand. “John. Give my best to everyone else.”

“I will,” Reese replied and shook Cheyenne’s hand. “Take care, Cheyenne.”

Cheyenne nodded, touched his hat, squared his shoulders, and walked through the portal. The wind howled around him as he crossed the threshold, whipping up a blinding cloud of dust… and when it died down, Cheyenne was alone on the ridge with eight dead outlaws at his feet.

The quiet was almost deafening. The air was thin and clear, despite the dust and the smells of horse and gunpowder and death. It was a little hard to catch his breath after so long at sea level, but by the time his horse walked up to him, his body had remembered how to breathe at this altitude. But he was thirsty—already a muck of sweat, although it was drying almost instantly—and drank gratefully from his canteen, still cool from the spring where he’d refilled it. Then he was struck hard by the realization that this was _his_ horse, _his_ canteen, _his_ rifle, _his_ saddle and saddlebags and bedroll. He was _home_.

He braced himself against his saddle, his head suddenly spinning from more than the height. He was home—but had he ever left? Had his entire time in New York been only a dream?

Rapid hoofbeats behind him jolted him out of his reverie, and he grabbed his rifle out of its scabbard and spun to look down the slope on the other side of the ridge. Then he lowered his rifle in baffled wonder when he recognized the riders’ hats: one sun-bleached Confederate cavalry hat with its string hanging low below its dark-haired owner’s chin, one white felt hat that had always looked too small for the blond head it sat on.

“—wasn’t a Gatling gun!” insisted a voice Cheyenne had thought he’d never hear again.

“Nobody can shoot that fast with a Winchester!” argued an equally familiar voice.

Cheyenne put his rifle away.

“I never _said_ it was a Winchester!” the first voice shot back. “I just said it can’t be a Gatling—you couldn’t get a Gatling _up_ here!”

“Well, whatever it was, Cheyenne could be in bad—” The riders reached the crest of the ridge at that point, and the blond rider’s face lit up with a relieved smile. “Cheyenne!” he cried and dismounted.

“Tom?” Cheyenne asked, hardly daring to hope that he wasn’t just seeing things. “Bronco?”

“You all right, Bodie?” returned the dark-haired rider in concern.

“I’m… I’m fine,” said Cheyenne, dazed and still staring at the blond rider, who was coming toward him.

“We heard the shootin’ and got up here as fast as we could,” the blond rider said. “Figured you might need some help.”

Cheyenne reached out tentatively to touch one shoulder of the apparition. It was solid. “Tom?”

“Yeah, Cheyenne. It’s me.”

Suddenly overcome, Cheyenne pulled Tom Brewster into a hug and tried not to weep in relief.

“Uh?!” Tom squeaked and patted Cheyenne’s back awkwardly.

Cheyenne huffed and backed away with a rueful smile, though he kept one hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Sorry, it’s just… I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Was the fight that bad?” Bronco Layne asked skeptically.

“It’s a long story. Where’d you two come from?”

“Fort Bridger. Army got word Powder Face was still on the reservation, so the major thought the rumors might be caused by outlaw attacks rather than Indians. He sent us to check it out.”

“We wired you at Fort Laramie before we left,” Tom added.

Cheyenne shook his head. “I never got it.”

“Oh. Well, since we’re here, we’d better help you get these bodies buried.”

“No, we’ll take ’em into Rawlins,” Bronco countered. “There’s probably a reward out for at least a couple of ’em. Where’s the wagon train, Bodie?”

“I… I left ’em back at Eightmile Lake….” Cheyenne turned to look back up the valley, but the motion caused something in his pocket to press against his hip. Puzzled, he reached into his pocket… and pulled out the beaded hat band Mr. Finch had commissioned for him to wear in the final fight against HR. It had still been on the black hat when Reese had picked him up to go to the library that morning, and when Reese had mentioned it, Cheyenne had stuck the band in his pocket and forgotten it was there.

“Is somethin’ wrong, Cheyenne?” Tom asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Cheyenne shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

* * *

[1] First line of the [_Cheyenne_ theme song](https://youtu.be/Lu4Rb-j1J-Y), which Clint Walker stated was the premise of the show in a nutshell.

[2] Ecclesiastes 2:26b (NIV), but a common refrain throughout the book. We’re not told whether Arthur is Jewish, of course—although Jewish mourning rituals would help explain why the glioblastoma hasn’t erased his memory of Diane’s death despite Control’s interference—but Saul Rubinek is Jewish, and I wanted to honor that.

[3] Blessed be the Judge of Truth


	14. Epilogue

_November 17, 2018_

_Maybe we were always going to end up here_ , John thought.

“Don’t you dare, John,” Joss warned.

He blinked at her. “What?”

“I know that look. You were wearin’ it the night we met. That’s your ‘Everything is pointless and I’m givin’ up on life’ look.”

“Joss—”

“Well, newsflash, Mr. Hopeless: I’m not leavin’ your side. So either we die here together, or we pull this off and live to meet our grandchildren. Do you hear me?”

He grinned. He couldn’t help it. “What’d I ever do to deserve you?”

“You took down a buncha punks on the subway, that’s what you did,” she replied, but the sparkle in her eye belied her gruff tone. Then she raised her Glock. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” he replied and raised his own SIG Sauer.

“Uh, guys,” Root’s voice interjected in John’s ear, “I should probably point out—”

“Nobody asked you, Machine!” Joss snapped. “Just tell us where those storm troopers are!”

That had been one of the hardest things for the whole team to get used to in the last month: hearing Root’s voice without Root being at the other end. Shaw, in particular (and quite understandably), was taking Root’s death hard, but even though John wouldn’t have said he and Root were _friends_ … it was sort of an “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” thing. And he did have to admit that in the past five years, she’d come a long way from the black-hat hacker she’d been when they’d first met.

“It’s not the storm troopers I’m worried about,” replied the Machine. “Coeus Hyperion just launched—”

“Is this going to undermine my morale again?” John interrupted.

“… possibly?”

“Then let’s just worry about the storm troopers for now.”

“All right,” the Machine sighed. “I’ll help you as long as I can.”

Even without knowing for sure what Coeus Hyperion was up to, it was still hard for John to keep from wondering whether the fight against Decima would always have led to his standing on the roof of a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan, guarding the last iteration of the Machine as she uploaded herself to a satellite for the coup de grace against the evil AI Decima had tried to use to take over the world. He was reasonably sure having Joss by his side wasn’t fated, but the rest of it….

“Here they come,” the Machine warned, and then the shooting started. John and Joss each shot with deadly accuracy, thanks to the Machine putting them in God Mode for as long as she could, but they barely had time to reload when their magazines were empty. Decima had amassed a private army, and Coeus Hyperion was pitting a full battalion against the Machine’s two defenders, heedless of the number of bodies piling up on the roof.

“Upload status,” John finally commanded as he slammed his last spare magazine into his gun.

“Ninety-nine percent,” the Machine’s rapidly weakening voice replied. “Two missiles inbound. I can’t hold out much longer… I’m sorry, John….”

And suddenly the reports of the Decima troops’ weapons and Joss’ return fire were joined by the cracks of much older rifles and the distinctive rattle of a… Gatling gun?

“John! Joss!” bellowed a voice straight out of the past. “This way!”

John and Joss didn’t have to be told twice. Still firing, they bolted toward the portal that had opened behind them into what looked like the moonlit parade ground of a cavalry fort.

“Give ’em coverin’ fire, boys!” the voice ordered, and the cavalry obeyed.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. John shoved Joss through ahead of him, and a split second later, Kevlar-shredding rounds tore through him, and he fell headlong through the portal and into the dirt. He had just enough time to register Cheyenne Bodie lunging toward him when the missile strike rocked the ground… and everything went black.

* * *

“Get the doc, quick,” Cheyenne ordered as he picked himself up again. “There’s still time to save him!”

“Right,” Bronco agreed, clapped Cheyenne on the arm, and ran to the post hospital while the two nearest privates picked Reese up and carried him off in the same direction.

Then Cheyenne turned back, just in time to get hugged by Miss Carter. “That’s twice now you’ve saved my life, Cheyenne,” she said shakily.

“Hey,” Cheyenne replied and hugged her back. “There’s no need to keep count, Miss Carter.”

She shook her head. “Call me Joss, please. Besides, my last name’s not Carter anymore. John and I got married under the name of Hawke four years ago.”

He smiled. “I’m glad to hear it, Joss.”

A polite throat clearing drew Cheyenne’s attention toward Tom and Lt. Morris, who were standing nearby. “Sorry to intrude, Cheyenne,” Tom began as Joss broke the hug, “but the lieutenant’s wonderin’ what to tell Maj. Wilson.”

“Well, the Hawkes are old friends of mine,” Cheyenne answered. “You can say they came under attack by unknown assailants and we rendered assistance, but… John’s been wounded, and now they’re stranded here.”

Lt. Morris nodded. “All right, that’s true enough. But what about…” He gestured toward the gate, presumably meaning the portal and the explosion. There was no sign of either now beyond spent brass and a few new holes in the logs.

“’Fraid you’re on your own there,” Cheyenne admitted. “Can’t explain that part of it myself. But be sure you emphasize that the Hawkes are friends of mine. I won’t stand for any insult to ’em, especially to Mrs. Hawke.” He knew Maj. Wilson had fought for the Union, hated the Klan, and was a staunch friend of the Buffalo Soldiers; but there were others among the troops and the settlers on the wagon train who were of a different mind, and Maj. Wilson’s word would go a lot further toward preventing trouble than Cheyenne’s own.

In fact, he could already hear one of the privates muttering, “Bad enough he’s an Indian lover—”

“That’s enough, Powell,” Lt. Morris barked over his shoulder before returning his attention to Cheyenne. “I’m sure we can find adequate quarters for Mrs. Hawke while her husband is in the hospital. And we’ll see that she’s not bothered.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Joss said.

Lt. Morris nodded and touched his hat to her, then turned and headed toward Maj. Wilson’s quarters, issuing orders as he went.

Cheyenne beckoned Tom closer. “Joss, this is Tom Brewster. I may have mentioned him a time or two.”

Joss looked puzzled, but then it clicked. “Oh, the lawyer! Right!”

Tom doffed his hat and shook her hand with a smile. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. Heard a lot about you.”

“Heard some stories about you, too—especially you and your cousin… what was it, the Parakeet Kid?”

“Canary,” Tom corrected, shooting Cheyenne a reproachful look.

“I had a little girl to entertain,” Cheyenne explained.

“You couldn’t tell her about your _own_ life?”

“She wouldn’t have believed it. ’Sides, she wanted to hear stories about spies, and those times you went undercover as Canary ain’t classified.”

Tom tilted his head. “You’ve got a point there.”

Joss chuckled. “Sameen still checks up on Gen every now and again.”

Cheyenne smiled. “How is she?”

“A _lot_ better than she was while she was livin’ with her junkie cousin. Finch got her citizenship paperwork fast-tracked, and she just loves that school he got her into. She’s on her third foreign language and wants to major in communications when she gets to college.”

“Good. Reckon I oughta write some letters to send back with you.”

Joss nodded. “She’d like that.”

Tom looked around and coughed pointedly.

“The mess hall’s over this way,” Cheyenne said, taking the hint. “That’s probably the best place for us to talk.”

Joss sighed. “I don’t know if I can eat… but I could probably use some coffee.”

“I’ll make sure the kitchen’s still open,” Tom offered and ran ahead.

“So where are we?” Joss whispered as Cheyenne ushered her toward the commissary.

“Fort Bridger,” Cheyenne whispered back before continuing at a more normal volume, “Took us about three weeks to get here from Eightmile Lake, but we made it in time for Independence Day. Now we’re here, though, the Army’s been reluctant to let us continue on to Idaho Territory. Seems the gang John and I took out wasn’t the only one attackin’ travelers in this area, and Maj. Wilson doesn’t want us to leave until he’s sure the route from here to Fort Hall is clear. We’ve been here a little over two weeks.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“The post trader’s store is back that way,” he continued, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. “When it opens in the mornin’, I’ll be happy to take you to get whatever you need to get by while you’re here.”

She shook her head. “I can’t ask that.”

“You don’t have to. There was a big reward out for that gang—$2,000 a head.”

Her jaw dropped. “Seriously?! What’d they do?”

“Killed a judge and two federal marshals and robbed the Army payroll office in Denver. And that was _before_ they took to robbin’ wagon trains.”

She whistled.

“Half o’ that reward money belongs to you an’ John,” he went on. “That should more than cover clothes an’ food and anything else you need. Besides, you folks looked after me back in New York. Now it’s my turn.”

She smiled and threw up her hands in mock surrender. “All right. Thanks, Cheyenne.”

He smiled back. “You’re welcome.”

“So what are you gonna do with your share?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know yet. There was a letter waitin’ when I got here from some folks plannin’ a new town in the Dakotas, up north of Bismarck. Said they’re gonna call it Bullfrog, but I dunno if that’ll stick.”

She laughed. “I’ve heard worse.”

“So have I. Anyway, they’re lookin’ for a sheriff who can keep the peace with the Sioux as well as in the town. If I like it up there, why, I might buy myself a ranch an’ some Herefords.”

“And get married?”

He shrugged. “I’m not opposed to the idea, if the right woman comes along. Might even take a Sioux wife—I’ve thought about it a time or two. Just have to see what the Boss has in mind,” he concluded with a glance heavenward.

She nodded, smiling. “Well, I hope it works out for you.”

“You know, if you two end up bein’ here a while, you’d be welcome to come with me. I’ve just about talked Tom into it; Bronco’s got another year left with the Marshals.”

“Thanks. I’ll have to talk it over with John.”

“’Course. Wasn’t expectin’ an answer tonight. Just wanted to offer.”

“I appreciate it, really.”

“So how long has it been?” he asked as they walked into the mess hall past the stares of the infantrymen.[1] “You said you’d been married four years now.”

She nodded. “It’s been five years almost to the day. Taylor graduated from college in May, married a real nice girl last year. They live in Nashville now, and my mom’s moved down there to be near them. And, uh….” Her smile turned a little shy as they sat down at a table and one of the mess privates set coffee, sugar, and cream in front of them and put a set of flatware at each place. “It was just after their wedding that we found out Taylor was about to be a big brother.”

Cheyenne grinned. “Well, congratulations!”

“Thanks!” She nodded her thanks to the private and poured cream into her coffee like always. “Big surprise at my age, and it was a pretty rough pregnancy, but she’s totally worth it.”

“A girl?”

Her smile brightened. “Cheyenne Leona.”

He ducked his head, embarrassed. “Y’know, with all the friends I have, I don’t think anyone’s named a baby after me before. I’ll have to write her a letter, too.”

“Oh, she’ll love that when she’s old enough.” Her smile dimmed a little, and she lowered her voice. “’Course, then she might start askin’ questions about why she can meet her Uncle Lionel but not her Uncle Cheyenne.”

“Well, let’s be honest,” he said at the same volume. “I might live to see 100, but 180’s a lot to ask of any man.”

That surprised a laugh out of her. “I’ve missed you.”

“Missed you, too, not that I’ve had much time for it.”

“All right,” Tom interrupted, arriving at the table with two plates and another mess private, who was carrying another coffee cup and a basket. “Are you _sure_ you don’t want anything, Mrs. Hawke?”

Joss nodded. “I’m sure. Thanks.”

“In that case…” Tom set one plate in front of Cheyenne and the other at the place beside him. “Wasn’t much left, Cheyenne, but Cook fried up some salt pork to go with the last of the taters. And Mrs. Hawke, I brought some biscuits in case you change your mind.” He took the basket from the private and set it next to Joss, then collected the coffee cup and a set of flatware and sat down next to Cheyenne.

Joss peeked in the basket. “Ooh, sourdough! Maybe I will have a biscuit.”

Tom smiled triumphantly. “I figured somethin’ light might sit well. Coffee’s kinda hard on an empty stomach.”

“Would you like a plate, Joss?” Cheyenne asked.

Joss considered. “That might be a good idea, mostly to catch the crumbs.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the private and left to get one.

“It sure is a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Tom said once the private was out of earshot. “I was really afraid Cheyenne had been out in the sun too long when he told us about what happened. Bronco thought he was just plumb loco.”

Joss laughed. “Yeah, he got that in New York, too.”

“Once it was even on purpose,” Cheyenne added. “Which reminds me, what happened to Arthur Claypool?”

Joss’ smile turned sad. “He went downhill pretty fast after he let go of Samaritan. By the end of the shiva, Sameen told Finch he really shouldn’t be moved. He rallied at Thanksgiving, which was also the first night of Hanukkah, but by the last night, he could barely walk. I don’t think he even made it another week after that.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“But at least he died among friends, and neither Control nor Decima got what they wanted from him. It was probably a good thing Sameen had him to focus on after you left, too. We couldn’t even mention your _name_ without her gettin’ mad until after Christmas—but Finch had your scrubs framed and gave ’em to her, and that helped.”

Cheyenne sighed. “I _definitely_ owe her a letter, then.”

Tom blinked in confusion. “Why would she be so mad at you?”

Cheyenne tried to think how to explain. “Well, you know how there’s some music boxes that can play several different tunes with the same cylinder and there’s a switch you move to select the tune you want?”

“Yeah.”

“Sam’s switch gets stuck.”

“Especially when she’s grieving,” Joss added in a tone that said Sam was grieving something more recent than Cheyenne’s departure. That didn’t sound good.

The private came back with the plate then but seemed disinclined to leave after he’d delivered it, so Tom said grace, and the three civilians ate quietly until Joss had nibbled her way through half a biscuit and declared herself finished. Then Tom gestured for the private to come take her plate and thanked him pointedly.

“Sir, are you sure—” the private began.

“We can clear our own things,” Cheyenne stated. “That’ll be all.”

“Yes, sir,” the private answered and left, closing the door behind him.

Cheyenne lowered his voice. “Joss, what happened?”

Joss sighed heavily. “We shoulda known Decima wouldn’t give up after Samaritan was destroyed. There was another AI that survived after the government shut down all the programs besides Northern Lights. Decima found it before Christmas, but it wasn’t anywhere close to complete back then. It took over three years for them to finish Coeus Hyperion, and the first thing it did was kill its creator.”

Tom hissed.

“And they didn’t shut it down?!” Cheyenne asked.

Joss scoffed. “Are you kiddin’? Greer was _thrilled_.”

“Greer?”

“John Greer—that’s right, you never met him. He was Decima’s head of operations, but he had this dream about AIs ruling the world and perfecting humanity and….” She shook her head. “Anyway, by that time, Control wasn’t nearly as twitchy about the idea that the Machine would stop producing relevant numbers, and there was a new administration tryin’ to clean house. It took Greer another year to finally sell the right people on givin’ Coeus Hyperion a chance with a twenty-four-hour test… and in the first hour, it escaped onto the Internet an’ started huntin’ the Machine and us. Root found a way to blind it, but… not before it had Collier killed.”

“So he did turn over a new leaf.”

“Yeah, turned state’s evidence against Vigilance after Claypool died. Feds put him in Witness Protection, but he kept workin’ with Root even after that. May have been what did him in.”

Tom was tapping his fingers on the handle of his cup, trying to do the math. “So… for you, that was….”

“Six months ago,” Joss answered. “I was havin’ a lot of complications with the baby, so John had just moved Mom and me to Nashville so I could be near Taylor—there’s a world-class hospital there. Elias and his man came with us ‘for protection,’ but I don’t know whether that was supposed to be my protection or his. Then the Machine gave John a new clean cover as Det. John Riley, and he went back to New York to work as Fusco’s partner.” She chuckled and shook her head. “Fusco calls me a couple times a week to complain. ‘Hey, partner, you’ll never guess what Wonderboy did today,’” she added in a decent approximation of Fusco’s voice.

Cheyenne laughed.

Tom was still trying manfully to keep up. “So this Cussin’ Hyper thing….”

“Coeus Hyperion,” Joss corrected and drank the last of her coffee.

“It… got loose, an’ then….”

Joss sighed again. “Well, I’m not sure even Cheyenne would understand what happened then. But the short version is, it was causing chaos, and Decima refused to even try to stop it, even after Root sacrificed herself to kill Greer. So Finch made a backup of the Machine and unleashed another program that would destroy Coeus Hyperion, no matter where it tried to hide—only it found a way to hide in space.”

Tom nearly choked on his coffee. “You mean like on the moon?!”

Joss smiled a little. “Between Earth and the moon, actually. We have things called satellites that orbit Earth.”

Tom turned to Cheyenne. “You didn’t tell us about those!”

“Never quite understood ’em myself,” Cheyenne admitted. “And you didn’t believe what I _did_ tell you.”

“But what do they do?”

“Can that wait until Joss has a chance to tell us about the fight?”

Tom grimaced. “Sorry, ma’am.”

Joss’ smile grew. “That’s all right.”

Cheyenne got back to the subject at hand. “I’m guessin’ if Coeus Hyperion could jump to a satellite, so could the Machine.”

Joss nodded. “That was the idea, but there was only one way to make it work. Someone had to take her backup to the roof of one specific skyscraper in Manhattan that had a link to that satellite and upload her directly. Finch was gonna do it himself, but he got shot, and John convinced her to guide Finch to the wrong building.”

“And you went back to New York just for that?”

Joss looked Cheyenne in the eye. “The Machine and I both knew John was losin’ hope. That’s an awful good way to get yourself killed. I couldn’t let him go up there alone.”

Cheyenne nodded slowly. “And now here you are.”

“Here we are,” Joss agreed with a wry smile.

Cheyenne sighed. “Sounds like I didn’t change that much after all.”

“You _did_ , Cheyenne.” Joss reached across the table and put a hand on Cheyenne’s wrist. “You gave us _three years_ of peace, of _life_ , that we would never have had without you. We saved a hundred lives directly in that time, and who knows how many other lives we saved indirectly because we were able to focus on stopping mundane problems like a new gang war instead of fightin’ Samaritan. That was three years the Machine had to grow and learn, so she was able to fight Coeus Hyperion much better than she could have otherwise. And that’s just _us_. Root made an app so the Machine could recruit more teams to save irrelevant numbers in other cities. Mike Laskey’s on one of ’em.”

Cheyenne accepted that news with a smile. “Is everyone else all right?”

“Far as I know. Zoe’s managed to keep her head down. Sameen and Fusco were off fightin’… somebody else. I didn’t follow what the Machine said.”

“And Miss Hendricks?”

“She’s in Tulsa. Finch was gonna send her to Italy, but Coeus Hyperion crashed an airliner, and… anyway, at least he got her out of New York.” Joss brightened suddenly. “And _you_ are in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame!”

That startled Cheyenne. “I’m what?!”

Joss pulled her telephone out of her pocket, and Tom’s jaw dropped. “Well, you were a few months ago, anyway,” she said, fiddling with the screen. “Finch got Grace an invitation to display that painting of you in the Prix de West art exhibition an’ sale. Can’t remember if he bought the painting or if Elias did. But Taylor took me down to Oklahoma City to see it, and I got a picture.” And she handed the telephone across to Cheyenne.

The painting was a watercolor; Cheyenne wasn’t well versed in art, but he knew that much. The background was soft and somewhat blurry, although he could still recognize the trees from the park, the city landscape beyond them, the coffee cart, some of the people who’d been there, and even Reese beside him. But the image of Cheyenne himself in the foreground was sharper and more distinct, more solid somehow. Miss Hendricks had even painted a blue-and-white morning star medallion on the sleeve of his jacket that hadn’t been on the real one.

He showed it to Tom. “That was at a park in New York.”

“Washington Square,” Joss added. “I don’t think Grace recognized John from behind, or she probably woulda called it ‘The Cowboy and the Detective’ or put somethin’ about ‘the Man in the Suit’ in the title. As it is, she called it somethin’ like ‘Waiting for Coffee.’”

Tom shook his head. “I… I don’t… I can’t believe it.” He laughed. “That’s amazin’.”

“Which part,” Cheyenne asked, “the photo, the painting, or the telephone?”

“All of it!” The door opened just then, and as it closed again, Tom looked up and called gleefully, “Hey, Bronco, come look! She’s got a pocket telephone, a real one!”

“So does he,” Bronco said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the hospital as he walked up to the table.

Joss took her telephone back and looked up at Bronco. “How is John?”

Bronco sat down next to Tom with a groan. “Doc’s still workin’ on ’im, but he says there’s a good chance he’ll pull through. Lost a lot of blood, though. Doc thinks he’ll need a transfusion.”

“Sounds like I’m about to get a new blood-brother,” Cheyenne told Joss.

“Sameen will be _so mad_ ,” Joss agreed and snapped a picture of Cheyenne, Tom, and Bronco before Cheyenne could get up from the table.

* * *

Harold returned to awareness sluggishly, to the tune of dueling heart monitors. Frankly, he hadn’t expected to return to awareness at all. He vaguely remembered the Machine guiding him down from the rooftop before the missile strike, and he _thought_ he remembered being met on the ground by EMTs, but he wasn’t sure. He was sure that there hadn’t been time for John and Joss to get to safety themselves.

He couldn’t bear to wake up in a world without two more of his closest friends. But despite his groan of protest, his body was waking him up anyway.

“Hey, here he is,” said Det. Fusco’s voice with more gravel in it than usual. “You back with us, Glasses?”

“Unfortunately,” Harold mumbled.

“Finch,” Ms. Shaw chided, and he felt his glasses slide onto his face. “C’mon. Wakey, wakey.”

“I’m beginning to understand Mr. Bodie’s complaints about your bedside manner, Ms. Shaw,” Harold groused but peeled his eyes open a crack.

Ms. Shaw, sitting beside his bed, tilted her head with half a smile. “How do you even remember that?”

“When you’re my age, you’ll be surprised at the things _you_ remember.”

Det. Fusco’s crackling chuckle drew Harold’s attention to the other bed, where the detective lay, pale-faced but alert and texting to someone.

“What happened?” Harold asked him.

Det. Fusco shrugged a little. “Ah, I got knifed by one of those creeps Coeus Hyperion sent after us. Doc Tillman says we’ll both be out in a couple days.”

Harold wasn’t at all sure he wanted to leave the hospital. Trying to go back to his old life now seemed fruitless.

“Finch,” Ms. Shaw said firmly, “you have visitors.”

Harold blinked at her owlishly. “What?”

There were footsteps in the hall then, footsteps he thought he should recognize but interrupted by the _tak-tak-tak_ of a cane striking the floor. When the couple they belonged to came within sight of the door, all Harold could see at first were figures out of a Western, the white man with the cane wearing a black suit and a string tie, the black woman wearing a striking mauve dress and a matching hat with a tall plume of feathers. But then they entered the room—and all of Harold’s gloom was shattered.

“Mr. _Reese!_ ” he cried.

Mr. Reese looked a bit pale, but his quiet laugh was a balm to Harold’s soul. “Missed you, too, Finch.”

“What… how….”

“We took a little detour to Fort Bridger,” Det. Carter said with a twinkle in her eye and reached into her handbag. “You’ve got mail, too.” She drew out a thick envelope and handed it to Harold.

Harold examined it. The paper was thicker than modern stationery, though probably relatively cheap for its day, and though the back read only _Mr. Finch_ , he still recognized Mr. Bodie’s firm antique handwriting, made all the more natural by the dip pen with which it was written.

He looked up at John and Joss again. “Was he well?”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” said John and nudged Ms. Shaw out of the chair. “When we left, he was about to take a job as the first sheriff of Bullfrog, North Dakota.”

Det. Fusco laughed.

“Show him the picture,” Ms. Shaw urged Joss.

“You jealous he’s got his own friends?” Joss teased as she took her phone out of her handbag.

“No, but that Bronco guy’s _hot_.”

Harold didn’t know why he’d expected the image on Joss’ phone to be in sepia tones, but seeing Mr. Bodie with his two best friends in living color was something of a shock. They all looked tired—Harold supposed it was late at night, judging from the lighting—and Mr. Brewster and Mr. Layne appeared startled by the picture-taking, yet even so, Mr. Bodie seemed far more at ease than he ever had been in New York. And that, in turn, eased a worry Harold didn’t know he’d been carrying for five years.

“Thank you, Joss,” he said and handed the phone back.

“Cheyenne said to tell you he’s still got his bulletproof vest,” Joss reported as she put the phone away. “He forgot he had it on until he got back to Rawlins that night and went to take a bath at the hotel. He said he’s _definitely_ gonna wear it on the job from now on.”

That eased Harold’s mind further, and he nodded. “Good. Thank you.”

“So how long were you at Fort Bridger?” Det. Fusco asked.

“About six weeks,” Joss replied, and she and Ms. Shaw moved over to his bed to talk.

But Harold returned his attention to the best friend he’d feared he’d lost forever. “I am inordinately glad to see you, John,” he said quietly.

John smiled. “I’m glad to see you, too, Harold. Kinda glad to see _anybody_ right now, but especially you.”

“I take it you were wounded?”

“Yeah, and had to suffer through nineteenth-century meatball surgery. It’s a miracle nothing got infected. We had Dr. Tillman check me over when we got back about an hour ago, and she said it looks like everything’s healing all right, but I’m probably stuck with this”—he gestured with his cane—“for a while yet. Joss thinks it’s time we both retired.”

Harold nodded. “I’m just glad you’re still alive. And I may be retiring myself.”

“Which reminds me, Shaw called someone else once she found out where you were. Should be arriving any time now.”

“Someone else?”

As if on cue, other footsteps sounded in the hall, and Harold caught a flash of familiar red hair just past John’s shoulder a moment before there was a gasp—and John got out of the way at the cry of “ _HAROLD!_ ” before Grace raced into the room and flung herself sobbing into Harold’s arms.

“Grace,” Harold choked out. “Darling, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s okay. It’s okay, Sameen told me everything. I forgive you.”

Harold sobbed in turn. “I should have told you myself a long time ago.”

“Shh.” Grace tightened her grip on him. “It’s okay. I’m here. We can start over. We’re going to be okay.”

Harold looked up at John, who smiled contentedly down at him. And past John somewhere, Harold fancied he could see Cheyenne Bodie touch his hat with a smile and a wink and ride off into the sunset.

* * *

[1] Fort Bridger was actually an infantry fort, not cavalry—but since Cheyenne had been a cavalry scout and most Westerns focus on cavalry adventures, it would make sense for John to assume their rescuers were cavalry until he found out where they were.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Now Playing: Carbines and Capacitors [AUDIO TRAILER]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27419065) by [DesireeArmfeldtPodfic (DesireeArmfeldt)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldtPodfic)
  * [Carbines and Capacitors (Art)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27504715) by [st_aurafina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina)




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